


Suffer the Little Ones

by Tawabids



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe, Durin Family Angst, Durinbabes, Feral Children, Gen, Minor Character Death, Potentially compatible with canon, Thorin's A+ Parenting, kink meme prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-23
Updated: 2013-02-28
Packaged: 2017-11-26 14:47:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 48,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/651483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tawabids/pseuds/Tawabids
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lost in the wilderness after a goblin raid, young Fili and Kili survive against all odds to grow up semi-feral in the forest, while Thorin and their mother believe them dead. </p><p>More than a decade later, Thorin hears news of dwarves robbing local farms and captures the bandits, only to recognise his own nephews. Now laden with two unsocialised youths who have no knowledge of normal dwarf life, Thorin is faced with the impossible task of teaching them to trust him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. breaking in the yearlings

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this [kinkmeme prompt: in summary, Fili and Kili grow up as feral dwarves in the wilds and have to be re-integrated into society when they're finally found. It's not easy for anyone involved.](http://hobbit-kink.livejournal.com/3393.html?thread=5464385)
> 
> I am not supposed to be writing fic but I was literally losing sleep over this prompt. Damn it.

You are only awake because Kili is having nightmares again. It’s your fault for telling him stories about orcs. Ma smacked you upside your head for it and you still thought it was funny, but this is the third night in a row he’s been whimpering in his sleep and you’re starting to regret your joke.

It’s not your fault he’s a coward. It’s not his fault either, Ma says, he’s only eight, barely as high as Uncle Thorin's belt. 

So you’re awake when the noises come. You hear metal on metal and another sound, a wet, thick hacking noise, like when Uncle Dwalin has gone hunting and is cutting up the boar for selling. And then the screaming starts.

Something much older and smarter than you are stirs in your breast and you shoot out from under the furs and start pulling your breeches on. “Mama!” you hear yourself shout. “Mama! Wake up!”

You have Dwalin’s smallest coat around your shoulders before you think about it, and Ma is shoving Kili into your arms. She has one of the axes in her hands and she steps past you. The blade slices through the air and splits the wall of the tent like it were spiderweb.

“Go!” Ma bellows. “Hide in the forest! We’ll find you—“

_“Mama, behind!”_

Something is ripping open the door ties and Ma turns and hefts the axe. You dig your fingers into the shoulders of Kili’s thin shirt and run. The night air is cold and for a moment you don't even know where the sky and the ground are. Then a monster with scarred grey skin and bulging eyes rears out of the darkness with a dripping hook of rusty iron and Kili screams, a louder sound than you have ever heard him make, but you duck under the sweeping steel and haul him along. The bushes ahead are thick and long-leaved and you hunch and run, battle through, waiting for the hot pain of a hook in your back. You can hear the monster’s cursing get fainter. It is not as small and light-footed as you. Dwalin’s coat catches on the twigs but you tug it free, not thinking, blind beneath the clouded sky and thick trees, tripping and stumbling and dragging your little brother with you.

When you stop, your throat hurts with the cold air and your eyes are streaming. You can feel thin cuts stinging your face, scrapes from the bushes that saved you both. Kili is silent now, stiff and stunned and invisible in the dark, but alive and clinging to your hand.

You can still hear the monsters’ roars. Or maybe it’s those beasts the elders say they ride. You don’t know or care. The sound makes you feel like you’re going mad, like you’ve got too much beer in your blood. You have to get away. As soon as you’ve caught your breath you tighten your grip around Kili’s hand and run.

\---

Twelve left for the trip to Moria, but only five return. Thorin sees them coming up the valley towards the summer camp and knows something terrible has happened. They’re only tiny spots against the stony scar of an old landslide, but these are not forerunners of the rest. They have no ponies, and even from this distance he can see that someone is limping. He fetches help and goes to meet them.

It is Dwalin who’s hurt – the others unharmed, but for their fatigue.

“We came as fast as we could. We were on the south arm of Bagildver two days ago,” Dwalin pants. “Goblins – a raiding party – heading for farms –” 

“Thorin!” Dis is the only one still standing, with black blood on her sleeve and her skirts tied up around her legs to keep up with the swift pace. “Thorin, we must go back!”

“The boys,” Thorin says, keeping his voice steady. She would not have left them unless there was nothing else to be done.

“They ran into the forest,” Dis says, and the pleading in her eyes tells Thorin that she has argued with the others for two days of marching. “They will be waiting for me, brother. I must find them.”

Thorin looks at the others. Farin and Vigg avoid his eye. Dwalin holds his gaze. “I heard a child scream,” he says quietly.

“We heard only that!” Dis cries, turning a snarl on him. “You know _nothing!_ You left them there with _nothing!_ ”

Dwalin hangs his head. Thorin does not need to ask how desperate the battle must have been for him to leave the dead behind, how lucky they were to escape with five. He clears his throat. “Twenty dwarves will be ready to march out within the hour. If there is any chance –” he nods at Dis. “They’re strong enough to seize it, and so shall we.”

Dis wants to march with them, but Thorin convinces her to stay at camp. She is exhausted from two days of a ceaseless pace without food, though she insists she can go another week if she needs to. Twenty-one march out with Thorin at their head, with the lightest supplies they can survive on and the heaviest weapons they can carry.

The Bagildver is a trailing mountain stretching out from the main range into old Eregion, with fertile lands all around – rich soil for men, rich pickings for orcs and goblins. They find the remains of the camp on the second day and the raiding party on the third, on the mountain's south-west arm. They know this is the guilty party by the dwarvish trophies the goblins fling aside as they flee from the arrows and axes. Almost all are killed quickly, but the few wounded are dragged into the centre of the foul circle and laid at Thorin’s feet.

“How many did you kill?” Thorin demands, putting one foot on the gushing axe-hole in the nearest goblin’s flank. “Where are the bodies? Tell me!”

The goblin beneath him groans and wriggles, but one of its neighbours, larger and twisted with the marks of old fights, begins to laugh.

“Split and munched,” he barks up at Thorin. “We sucked the marrow from their bones and scattered the rest. Sickly meat, it was too.”

“How many?” Thorin growls, raising his sword. “Tell me and I will spare you!”

The goblin sneers up at him. “Uncle,” he says mockingly, using the dwarvish word. “You want the little two, don’t you? I beat them and cut them and pulled out their livers hot and steaming even as they squealed for—”

Thorin cuts his throat before he can utter another world.

Through the roar of his rage and the growing void of his grief, he feels glad that he made Dis stay behind.

They search the forest anyway, all around the camp where dwarves slept. The tents are torn and crushed, the ponies butchered, goblin leavings strewn about as a final insult. In a clump of bushes they find a few scraps of fur torn from a warm coat, but the forest is thick and they can see no clear trails leading that way. At the goblin’s camp they find a few remains, and bones in the fire. Barely enough to account for two or three of their kin. They gather the bones up gently in a cape. Three of the older dwarves who have lost brothers and cousins cut off long braids, weeping silently, and tie the makeshift bags with them. They collect what belongings they can find – weapons and trinkets that will have to serve as burial gifts for the unburied – and go back to the living.

Thorin has not seen Dis raise her voice in many years, even to scold the children. Like him, she never says more than she needs to say. But when he comes back to her without her children, the wordless sounds she makes are louder than he can bear.

\---

You don't know how long you run. You stop as Kili begins to cry. When the clouds part, a gibbous moon trickles through the trees and you realise your brother has no shoes, and his feet are bleeding. The goblins' victory horns still echo from down in the valley. Goblins have an incredible sense of smell, Balin told you, and will hunt until they drop dead. You heave Kili up onto your back and try to carry him further, but your legs begin to shake almost at once. There's an overhang up ahead, with a bed of dry ferns beneath. The thought of sleep is as rich and beautiful as gold right now. You crawl in and tuck Kili into your coat - Dwalin's coat - but maybe Dwalin is dead, which makes it your coat now. You find there's a small knife in one of the pockets, but it's no longer than your hand, no good for killing goblins.

"I want Mama," Kili grizzles. "I'm cold. My feet hurt. I want Mama."

"Shut up," you tell him, but not unkindly. "The goblins mustn't hear us."

He falls asleep within minutes. You try to doze with your back against hard stones. The overhang isn't even high enough to sit up, and your neck is bent at a painful angle. Sleep comes fitfully, and you're jolted awake every time Kili shifts or the wind rushes through the branches above, every time your arm goes to sleep or the bare earth becomes to painful. The only blessing is that you aren't woken by the horns again. Maybe they're not hunting you. Maybe Ma will find you soon.

By the time the dawn is creeping through the forest you know you won't sleep any longer. You get Kili up, tear off strips from your tunic to tie around his feet, and make him walk even though he complains. You don't dare go back down the valley to the campsite, but you remember the road you took on the way here. You can't see far through the trees, but if you go up and up and then down, you'll be in the valley below the west face of the mountain, and the road curves right in there. That's the way back to the township of tents where the dwarves are spending summer. Ma and Dwalin and the others will go that way, and Uncle Thorin will come back along there to look for you and Kili. Yes, that's the best way to go. 

You climb all morning, and then carry your brother through the afternoon. The trees thin to shriveled beeches and you can see distant peaks. The ground grows dry and dusty, but soon the slope flattens and you find a mountain tarn. The brown water is clear and you're both so thirsty that you drink until your bellies hurt. Hunger has become constant, more painful than the scratches on your face and hands. Dwalin's coat seems incredibly hot and heavy but you don't dare leave it behind in case you have to spend another night in the forest. At last the ground turns downwards. At the bottom of the valley you'll find the road. Ma and Thorin will be waiting there. You can almost see them. They'll have dried meat and bread with butter, their arms will be warm and their voices soothing. You just have to keep going downhill.

_(You don't know that you're not walking down the southwest arm of the Bagildver; you're east of the mountain, and you've just crossed the saddle back to the main range. You're in utterly the wrong place, walking further and further away from where Thorin will be looking for you)_

_(You don't know that you should always stay put when you're lost in a forest)_

_(You don't know that your uncle will never find you)_

_(You don't know you'll never see Ma again)_

When you come across a creek you follow it rather than battle through the ever-thickening forest, stepping from stone to stone or wading up to your waist when the banks become too steep. You think it's strange, because you don't remember a river below the east face, but perhaps you missed it on the way. Or maybe it goes underground later. You weren’t raised in a mountain, but you still think like a dwarf, without real knowledge of the flatland. Dwarves think about maps in three dimensions, trust in their internal compasses, and believe the world above ground works in two dimensions like a drawing on a page. You don’t see how the curves and changes of the land drive your path, expand distances and warp direction. You don’t notice where the river is going. You don’t understand that points in the distance are stable: that the snowy peaks and the glimpsed head of Bagildver could be your guides. You’re going the wrong way.

"I'm hungry," Kili whispers, his arms loose around your neck and his head resting on your shoulder.

"I'm hungry too," you say. "We'll be safe soon. Then we'll eat."

But the sun goes down just as the slope starts to level out, and you're so tired. There's a smooth beach of sand nearby with dry rocks to shelter you from the wind. You sleep for the night, and don't stir even for Kili's nightmares. When the sun comes up it seems to have risen early. Your head feels too heavy to lift and Kili is difficult to wake. His eyes are glazed, and when he tries to stand he cries out and sits down again. You unwrap his feet and find that one of the cuts, scabbed with dirt and blood, is surrounded by red, hot skin. You make him sit on the edge of the stream while you wash it as best you can, though you can tell how much the cold water hurts. You tell him how brave he is. He smiles faintly, but he's swaying a little. You'll have to carry him.

You keep stopping to rest. You're so tired. You hold Kili tight, because he keeps falling asleep, his arms hanging boneless against your chest. You have to press handfuls of water to his mouth just to get him to drink. The stream is wider now, shallower and easier to follow, but still it takes all day to travel even the length of the valley. The road must be soon. It must be. Thorin and Ma will be just past the next bend. Every time you get dizzy you pick a rock just ahead and tell yourself, just reach that rock, reach there and you can stop for the night. But you don't ever stop. You just pick another rock and keep going.

Sometime in the evening, when the first stars are sharing the sky with the dying sun, you smell smoke. Your heart begins to beat fast, though your blood feels thick in your veins. Around the next curve in the river there is a well-trod path on the bank. You hurry on and come suddenly upon a cluster of huge stone houses, man-sized dwellings. One has a roof blackened by recent fire, and a dead mule lies a little way away, its head cut fully from its body. You stand dazed for a moment, but the light is getting worse. You walk around the burned house to see the other buildings. Candlelight flickers behind the shutters and there are voices inside.

A tall human - (he's actually no more than a boy, like you, but you don't recognise him as such) - is standing outside the largest house. When he sees you he gives a yell and begins to bang on a pot hanging beside him. A rust-tipped spear is in his hand. "The goblins are back!" he yells in the common tongue, which you find difficult for you to follow. "The goblins are back!"

_(You can't see what you look like, filthy and bloodied and in a too-big fur coat, your hair already darkened with dirt, leering out of the shadows. You can't blame the boy for panicking, though it still seems monstrously unfair)_

Men pour out of the big house. They are rough-clothed farmers, some bandaged from a recent battle, but they have antique weapons and shields and they roar at you in a clamour of voices. They're so huge, as big as giants in the old stories. An arrow whistles past your face, another thuds into a solitary fencepost nearby.

Your blood rushes to your head and you turn and run, leaping down the bank and across the ford, stumbling and almost dropping Kili every few steps. In the forest on the far side you hide to catch your breath. You aren't thinking anymore. You're too tired to think. All you can remember is the face of the scarred goblin outside of the tent, and the roar of the men. Soon there comes the barking of dogs and you heave yourself up, carrying Kili in your arms because he can't hold on any longer, and run deeper into the forest. The men don't follow you far from their homes, but you keep going anyway until you fall and find you can't carry your brother any further. You can't. You curl up where you are, holding him to your chest, listening to him breathe, shallow and slow. 

In the morning you almost don't get up. Your thoughts meander across your mind like scum drifting on a pond. You don't think about what it means if you don't stand up, all you know is you don't have the strength anymore.

Your brother stirs in your arms. "Fili," he murmurs, so quiet you imagine it as much as you hear it. "I'm so hungry."

You have to stand up. You have to. You grab knotted bark and low branches and haul yourself to your feet. You’re in a little hollow between to thick-rooted trees. The daylight hurts your eyes.

"Stay here," you tell Kili, but he’s already sleeping again. You take off Dwalin's coat and wrap him up in it, but he doesn't wake. You can't feel the breeze through your thin night-shirt. You can't feel anything. You start to walk, holding onto the tree trunks for support. The forest seems to swim around you, and the sound of birds are over-loud in your ears. When your hand grabs onto sharp spines instead of peeling bark it takes a moment for the pain to reach your consciousness, but at last you yelp and pull back, holding your fist to your chest and glaring at the offending bush.

Spines. The bush.

Wild raspberries.

They extend for twenty feet through the trees, thick and tall as a man, heavy with an early summer haul and still pale pink like Kili's tongue. You groan and grab the nearest handful, heedless of the spines now, shoving them into your mouth. You eat and eat, scattering a few birds, and slowly your mind rises from the surface of the swamp and you remember your brother. You pick more raspberries, making an apron of your shirt, and carry as many as you can back to the hollow between the trees. You manage to shake Kili awake, make him sit up against the roots and show him the berries. He starts to cry as he eats, snot dribbling down his face to mix with the berry juice on his chin. You leave him with the pile and go back for more. You both eat so much you throw up, and Kili cries again, but you laugh and promise it doesn't matter, in the forest you can make a mess and no one cares. When you've brought back three lapfuls of berries, staining your already filthy nightshirt even worse, you finally stop and nap in the noon sun with Kili tucked under your arm.

The last thing in your mind before you fall asleep is the knowledge, sure but somehow not frightening, that those raspberries saved both your lives.

"Do we have to keep going?" Kili asks, when you've both woken up and eaten more. You shake your head.

"We'll stay here a while. Until we're rested."

You start to remember lessons Balin gave you about the forest. ‘It's not a natural place for dwarves,’ he said, ‘but we've been doing a lot of unnatural things since we left Erebor.’ You break of fern stems to chew, but they taste bitter and stick in your teeth, so you dig up the roots instead. They're not easy to eat, but you remember Dori teaching you a myriad of ways to make fire. Fire is natural to dwarves, everyone says that. 

You can hear water and you take Kili to find it, cutting marks in the trees so you can get back to the raspberry bushes. There are tiny, speckled fish in the pools, no larger that your little toe, but you can't even think about trapping or catching them yet. You wash Kili's cut feet again. The bad one looks a little better. You let him play in the sand while you collect stones, looking for the right colour and the way they catch the light. You spend the rest of the day working on a little pile of sticks and dry lichen, trying to get a spark, and after hours and hours you finally coax a tiny flame to life. The roots are easy to stomach when they're heated through, and you eat as many raspberries as you can manage. You're already thinking of bivvies made of branches and woven leaves to keep the wind and the worst of the rain out. And though you've never made one yourself, you've seen humans using hollow branches and loops of flax to make snares for the fat pigeons that nest in these woods. 

_(It will be almost a year before you catch your first pigeon, but from the beginning you were thinking about it. From that moment in front of the first fire, you wanted to survive)_

That night Kili is restless, asking when you can both go back to Ma and Thorin. To quiet him you sing your uncle's song about the Misty Mountains. You miss some of the words and you can't sing it like Thorin can, but it puts Kili to sleep without a frown on his brow.


	2. land's beginning

You're afraid of being too close to the men's farms. When you've stripped the raspberry bushes, the two of you go deeper into the forest, back towards the low hills where the land is too rocky for plows and pastures. Rocks and mountains are things you've been taught since birth, and you see that it is all limestone here. Bad for dwarf-hewn caverns and mines, but good for growing things. Limestone is ideal for natural caves too, and there are many of them in these hills, warm and dry, full of crawling, hopping insects that taste very good when roasted, though Kili takes some convincing the first time. In those first few months you learn how to dig grubs out of rotting wood, how to use the tiny fish and the last of the spring birds-eggs to lure stoats and weasels, how to be patient enough to wait with a rock poised to drop down on them. You learn what plants can be eaten by nibbling little bits and seeing whether you get sick. It becomes a game for Kili, who has an eye for differentiating one leaf from another and spotting something new. 

As the summer wanes you begin to fear the cold and barrenness of winter, even with warm caves and plenty of evergreen ferns for the hungriest months. The breakthrough comes as you travel into wilder areas, coming across a long-abandoned human house with what used to be a large garden. The flowers and fruit trees have long died or been strangled with weeds, and you think there's nothing of use, but Kili sees one plant he doesn't recognise and in his curiosity digs up the greatest treasure trove the two of you have come across since the raspberries – sweet potatoes, with purple and orange flesh, seeded by the long-gone farmers and now growing wild all round the house. You excavate a suitable cave nearby and there you hole up for winter, returning to dig up the sweet potatoes as you need them. 

It is the worst winter you will have, despite the walls you build to keep the wind and rain out of the cave’s entrance and the fire you constantly feed. You have only the one coat between you, and Kili's tunic is growing threadbare without any means to repairs rips and gaping seams. He throws tantrums often, when he's hungry, when he's bored, when he's thinking about Ma and Thorin. Sometimes his tantrums last hours, or his screams are so loud you're afraid that some predator will hear. You know how miserable he is, but more than once you hit him and shake him, trying to silence him, and then hold him and beg him to forgive you. The potatoes run out before the first buds of spring, and you travel further and further afield to look for food – fish, wild roots, once a freshly-killed rabbit you stole from a fox – leaving Kili alone with the fire. Every time you return you fear that he'll be gone, that goblin footprints will be thick in the dirt outside the cave, or that he'll simply have vanished like smoke in the air. 

As soon as the birds come back with the spring you start moving again. Your moccasins have long since worn to nothing, so you are both barefoot, callouses thick as leather on your soles. Kili has figured out, during his long periods of loneliness while you were looking for winter supplies, how to pack embers tight into a hollowed branch so that they smoulder for days, which means you can carry the fire with you. You take pocketfuls of potato seeds too. You don't know anything about growing plants - that's a man's work, filthy work, not for dwarves of Durin's line - but each time you see a patch of wet earth that looks promising you bury the seeds and carve a mark into the nearby trees. Who knows whether you'll come back this way?

Early in the spring you emerge from the hills and find the road. This is the road you came along more than half a year ago, the road on which Ma and Thorin and all the others must have travelled. You've gone right around the hills North of the Bagildver and come back out on the dwarven route between Moria and Rivendell. Kili doesn't realise the significance of it and you don't tell him, though you can't keep the smile off your face. For the first time in a long while you think maybe things will be better soon, maybe every day won't be a struggle to keep you both alive. What a surprise it will be for all the dwarves, how happy Ma will be to see you both!

But within a few hours you find the plateau where the dwarves' tents had been, and it is empty. The grass has grown thick and the campfires are gone, but for an occasional, broken circle of stones. They would have left before winter, months and months ago. Kili seems withdrawn, and you realise he had figured out their destination the same as you.

You don't know what to do now. You never paid attention when the adults talked about further-away days than tomorrow. Where would they go? Back to Ered Luin, the Blue Mountains, via the long North route? Kili was born there, and you know Thorin has already sent settlers ahead, but your memories of the place are little more than scraps. The only thing you're sure about is that it takes months to travel there even with ponies. How can you follow the others, when you don't know the land further than the limestone hills? What if it's even worse up North, without all the plants Kili has learned and named with his childish phrases and invented words? What about all the sweet potatoes you sowed? You sit and stare at the river for a long time, wondering why you've bothered at all to survive this long. You won't make it another winter, no matter how many months away it is. All the pain and hunger of the last year has been for nothing. 

Movement catches your eye and you see Kili come around the bank, hopping from rock to rock and bending to splash his hands in the water. He holds something up for you to see, grinning.

"Dog!" he calls. "Dog! Dog!"

You don't know what he's talking about. He meanders over at his own pace, and opens his hand to show you the gasping creature sitting on his filthy palm. It leaps away as soon as it sees the light, bounding back down towards the river.

"Frog," you correct him.

He mumbles some made-up words at you and scampers off, thrilled by the promise of more dog-frogs to catch.

You eat roasted frog that night, sitting around one of the stone rings that your kin laid down in early summer a year ago. Kili rocks back and forth on a log and sings the lullaby about the Misty Mountains. He doesn't know it properly, so he sings a rejigged song, rhyming gold with itself, "Oh for the missing mountain gold, we done in deep and cover gold." When you try to sing with him you find you've forgotten some of the real words, so you join in his version. 

You go back to the forest that summer. This time you don’t have to work everything out in painful errors and slow steps. You know how to forage and hunt quickly, and there is plenty of time to experiment, to rest, to play. This is when you finally find the trick of the pigeon snares, as well as how to make deadly slings with stones and weave a shelter strong enough to keep the rain out so you can camp even without caves. You find two places where your scattered potato seeds have taken root and though the tubers are not yet ripe, you will remember the location easily now you know how to navigate in the forest. You collect more seeds and this time choose your plots more carefully, to match where they grew last time.

There are new problems to overcome, though. Despite a year of hunger, Kili has grown fast and the remains of his shirt barely cover him from thigh to shoulder. He’s bursting out of it in every direction, and your own clothes aren’t serving you much better. You can’t make clothes from the forest, but you refuse to let your brother go naked. Ma wouldn’t have it. Ma would smack you upside the head. Over the heat of midsummer you crouch at the tops of trees, memorising the land, thinking and planning. You can see smoke in the far distance, in certain spots. You know what it means.

You make Kili stay in the hills while you follow a stream to the nearest human farms, watching for two days before you get the courage to break into a house while the family is in the fields. The sacks of grain are too heavy to carry, but you take clothes, a spare knife, blankets and two leather water skins before you encounter the farmer's dog and have to bolt out the window. You think you hear the sound of pursuit, but it makes you laugh as you run. There’s no way they’ll catch you in the forest.

Your brother loves the new clothes. You have to cut the legs and sleeves short, and they’re so baggy you could fit another two dwarves inside them, but you use the strips of extra cloth to tie them tight around Kili’s wrists and ankles and he struts and poses in his new finery. It strikes you suddenly that he looks more like you remember him looking, before the monsters in the night, before the forest. You sit down and find tears on your cheeks. Your vision blurs as you brush them away with your wrist.

You feel a shadow over your face and Kili’s hands against your hair. You raise your head to meet his eyes. He holds your head in his hands like it's something delicate. 

“Fili? Can I help?” he asks, bottom lip stuck out and brow furrowed.

You laugh, trying to rub the tear tracks off your face. “You do help.”

You survive that winter, and the next, and the next after that. You don’t realise how tall you are until you notice that your breeches, which used to cover your ankles, are now at your knees. Kili has grown from a tiny child you could easily carry to a youth as tall as you. You worry that he’ll stop listening to you when he gets bigger, but so far he still does what you say. Usually.

The two of you travel further north each summer, though why and where are not questions you talk about. You celebrate together whenever you find new territory – the rugged cliffs of a mountain you’d never climbed before, the crystal pools and streams in a ravine you’d never crossed, the trees that seem as tall as a hundred dwarves in a forest you’d never wandered. The two of you spend lazy days swimming naked in the rivers, play-hunting each other until you both learn to move as silent as smoke, or wrestling in the long grasses, though you almost always win against Kili's skinny limbs. You steal from farmers when you need to, when a knife breaks (only the knives of men break; Dwalin’s is still strong) or a blanket has worn too thin, or to get cheesecloth to keep food fresh. You never rob the same house twice. Each winter you return to the limestone hills with their twisting caves and the scattered potato plots hidden all through the forest. You make up songs and riddles and stories together, and sometimes you forget which of Kili’s words are real and which he has invented.

Kili once asked what happened to Ma, frowning as he tried to remember.

“She was killed by goblins,” you told him. You’re not sure of the truth when you say it the first time, but when he asks for the whole story later, and then again a while after that, you start to believe your own embellishments. 

You play counting games, and knucklebones, and compete for who catches more stoats in a season. But when you try to count up how many years it’s been since Ma cut open the tent and told you to run, you can’t work it out. Eight? Nine? More?

One year your beard starts to grow in, soft and downy gold. Kili laughs and laughs the longer it gets, but he loves rubbing his face against it too. You feel embarrassed at first. You have a memory that beards are important, that they mean something, and somehow you should be treating it with respect. You feel, somehow, like you don’t deserve a beard, and you don’t know why. But you can’t bear to cut it, either.

You can’t remember Ma’s face anymore. It bothers you, but never for long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So far I've transplanted flora and fauna from the New Zealand landscape into this story, partly because the film universe is obviously very dominant in this fic, and partly because it's quite a lot easier writing stuff I know. In case of confusion: the NZ flax is unrelated to linseed; it is a long-leaved bush which has been used for rope/house thatching/hunting traps/basket weaving for hundreds of years, and later for linen by Europeans. I couldn't find an equivalently versatile plant that might have been more familiar to Tolkien, but I welcome suggestions. Any other unfamiliar animals, insects or plants in the story are likely to be NZ natives as well, though I'll use English names for them.


	3. the year of the orc

That summer is the year you meet the orcs.

You’re farther north and deeper into the range than you’ve ever been, walking for days on grassy tundra, and your supplies are running low. Neither of you have had any success hunting conies with your slings. The rabbits up here are used to different predators, perhaps. Despite your rumbling bellies you're both cheerful, sleeping under the infinite white candles of the stars, inventing stories for the constellations. It's Kili who looks along the slopes and sees the campfire first, and he shakes you to attention. His eyes are wide and his breath is quick as a panicked rabbit himself.

“What’s it?” he whispers. “Fili? There ne’er bigguns in the mountains!”

‘Bigguns’ is his word for human farmers. You rise into a crouch, checking that your own small fire has long since burned out.

“Stay here. I’ll go and look,” you push him back down among the rocks. It’s not easy to make out the distance of the fire with no moon tonight, but you’re fairly sure it’s a bonfire and far away. You pat his shoulder. “Whatever it is, we’ll leave before first light. It won't even know we were here.”

The starlight is bright enough to make out your footing well enough, and before the Carnil star has risen you’ve reached the outcrop where the bonfire is burning and can see shapes and hear guttural voices. You shudder at the memory of such voices, but your curiosity is far too strong, and the smell of roasting meat makes your stomach groan. You keep your eyes lowered so the fire doesn’t ruin your night vision, which seems like a good idea right until you walk right past the orc relieving himself over the edge of the bluff.

You hear the growl and turn just in time to leap back from the sweep of its hooked sword, stones slipping under your feet. “Oi! Raggedy little worm!” he growls, and you lose your balance and find yourself falling smack-bang against the nearest boulder. The orc approaches, twice your height and spitting as he snarls. Your heart is trying to jump out of your chest and your foot skids on the pebbles as you try to stand. 

“A dwarf! A dwarf spy!” he bellows, and the conversation around the fire goes silent.

“I’m not a dwarf!” you cry, raising your hand. “I’m not!”

The orc frowns down at you, though his face seems to be perpetually frowning anyway. “Not a dwarf?”

“That is, I’ve abandoned all dwarf-kind,” you babble, getting slowly to your feet. “I’m a thing all on my own.”

The orc lowers his sword a little, nose wrinkling. “A hermit? With a knife, no doubt, waiting to slice us in our sleep?”

“No, no!” you extend both your hands now. You feel like you're watching the scene from outside your body, and your tongue is running off without you. “I was hungry. That’s all. I thought to share the fire and food.”

The tip of the sword droops even further. The orc steps in close, peering down at you. He smells of bile and rust. Then he laughs and his hand shoots out and grabs a hold of the hair on top of your head. “Come along then, hermit-dwarf!” he sneers. “Come and join us.”

Trying not to whimper, you’re shoved along to the fire, where the rest of the orcs – four all together, each a different size and shape – are slowly lowering themselves back onto the stones. One of the them sniggers at you.

“Runaway criminal,” he jerks his chin at you. “Cast out by his kin, no doubt.”

“I am not! I chose solitude,” you reply, and he cackles.

You’re pushed down until you’re sitting cross-legged in front of the fire. There’s a whole deer carcass at the edge of the circle, and one of the orcs is butchering it and handing the meat to another to skewer and roast over the flames. The heat of the fire pushes the smell over you in waves and drool starts to pool in your mouth. You must stop thinking with your stomach and start planning your escape. You hope to the stars that Kili didn’t try to follow you.

“Young, this one,” one of the orcs comes in close to inspect you.

“Is it?” another asks. “They all look as hairy lumps to me.”

The orc leering down at you nods. “Hard to get the young ones outside their mountains. Very odd.”

“I told you. I’ve abandoned dwarf-kind,” you repeat, resting your hands on your knees. The orc above you laughs and grabs a chunk of meat from the fire, tossing it into your hands. It’s searing hot and you juggle it and then bite down. Fat runs down your chin and the taste is exquisite. You and Kili have never imagined hunting deer, but at once you’re wondering if they could be trapped or snared. You must get your mind back on track. Escape.

“Why’re you up in the mountains if yer not from a mountain?” one of the orcs asks suspiciously.

You wipe your chin and try to think. “I like being up high,” you say finally, earning another round of laughter.

“Up high! A dwarf, up high!”

“Rot and rubbish!”

“It’s true. Climbing mountains is my life,” you insist with a shrug. “Believe me or not, I don’t care.”

Somehow you finish the meat without being turned into meat yourself. And before you know it you’ve gone through a whole conversation with the orcs, and listened for some time while they bicker with each other and trade insults. The moon begins to rise between the peaks and still the orcs haven’t killed you. Your heartbeat has almost returned to normal. You’ve started to think maybe you will get out not just alive, but perhaps with something more. The orcs have left most of a deer leg on the dwindling fire, but none of them have eaten a bite for a while. They seem to be sated and relaxing. Suddenly you want that deer leg more than you’ve wanted anything in your whole life. You want to bring it back to your brother and see the look on his face when he tastes it.

“That hunk,” you say, pointing at the leg. “None of you going to eat that?”

“That’s our kill, mangy not-dwarf,” the biggest orc says, the one who caught you and dragged you into the circle.

“I want it. Give it to me,” you say. That seems to be how they talk. Demands and threats. “To feed myself when I’m climbing the next mountain.”

“You’re not getting nothing free,” the fattest of the orcs snaps. “You ain’t no friend of ours.”

“What can I trade you for it?” you ask. You have nothing but a human knife and clothes, but you’d be willing to give up the knife for the meat. The smell is that good.

After a moment the big orc points at your head. “Them feathers in your hair. You like ‘em?”

You reach up to touch them. They’re from a long-tailed, grey bird that’s hard to snare. Kili got one last time the moon was full and put the feathers in your hair as a trophy. They shimmer like moonlight themselves, but they’re nothing valuable. You’ll lose them next time you’re crawling through the brambles looking for mushrooms. Nevertheless, you straighten your back. “They’re hard-won and I prize them highly,” you say haughtily. “I’ll give you one for the whole leg.”

“You’ll give me all three, you festering boil!” the orc replies.

"Two!"

"I said _three_!"

“Alright,” you agree.

The orc grins and stands to fetch the leg from the fire, wrapping a handful of grass around the bony ends to protect himself from the heat. You hurry to untangle the feathers from your hair, smooth them and place them on a flat rock. Still expecting to be suddenly faced with a sword instead of a trade, you take the meat cautiously. As soon as it’s in your hands, steaming and heavy, you take a couple of steps back. The big orc just bends to scoop up the feathers. You’re offered no thanks, so you give none, just turn and bolt for it while they’re all looking at the feathers.

You almost trip, but catch yourself and make for the shadows of the crags nearby, running as fast as you dare until your eyes recover. You can hear the orcs laughing uproariously behind you, and you wonder if the trade for the worthless feathers was some elaborate orc-joke. If so, you count yourself lucky to have suffered an orc-joke and lived.

When you reach Kili you find him with the blankets and supplies packed, pacing back and forth. His knife is drawn and he's tapping the flat of the blade against the side of his leg. He gasps as you appear out of the darkness, and stares at the bounty in your hands.

“What happened?”

“I had dinner with orcs,” you pant. “I’ll explain later. Let’s get out of their range while the moonlight’s good enough to see our footing.”

You head over the nearest ridge and down to a sheltered bay with a mountain tarn to replenish your water skins. You carry the deer leg the whole way, and it is still warm when you both settle on your rolled blankets and you can finally hand it to your brother.

His eyes are as round as the moon and the look of bliss on his face as he digs his teeth in are worth the night’s terror.

You sleep a few hours and then start again in the pre-dawn light, putting as much distance between you and the orcs as possible, but you can’t forget the encounter. As soon as you're back in the fringe of the forests, you tell Kili to watch for more of the rare, grey birds and snare one if he can, and he dutifully does. When the two of you encounter a slow-marching cluster of orcs coming out of the mountains two weeks later, you tell Kili to stay hidden and make a beeline across the rocky slopes to catch up with them. You scout out a rough ridge just above the plateau where the orcs are marching, and jog along it as if your presence is a mere happenstance. You hail the orcs when you're within earshot and make ready to dive behind the nearest boulder if they take offense.

A babble of their language runs up and down the marchers and the one at the front calls the party to a halt. From up on your ridge, you wave down at them with your hand on your hip. You recognise the leader; he's the same big orc who caught you in the mountains, and close behind him is his fat friend. The latter shouts at someone in the party, "Eh, lookat this! It's that not-dwarf I told you about!"

"We've no food for you, begger," the leader yells. "In fact, we're rather hungry, if you really need a warning," he laughs and makes some sign at the small orc beside him. The small one reaches into a cylinder on his back, lifts a curved stick in his hand and makes a pulling movement you can't interpret until a black bolt shoots right past your ear and buries itself, quivering, in the hill behind you. You fling yourself backwards in surprise and the laughter of the orcs echoes across the slopes. You tug the bolt out of the dirt and stare at its serrated tip and fluted tail. If you've ever seen a bow and arrow before, the memory is lost deep in your mind.

"Come back, not-dwarf, come back!" you can hear the leader growling. "Don't you recognise a 'hello' when you see one?"

"I had no intention of harassing you," you call back, shifting to the edge of the ridge again and squatting down onto your haunches to make a smaller target. You toss the bolt back down, letting it clatter at the feet of the leader. "There's my 'hello' in return, and my 'goodbye' as well. I'll be on my way."

"Wait, wait!" the fat orc bellows. You stop and cock your head at him. He points at the leader, whom you suddenly notice is wearing two of the silver tail-feathers in metal rings through his ears. "You have any more of those shiners? You need another haunch? I'll swap you."

You grin down at him. You've got a dozen feathers from the last bird Kili caught. You point down at the small orc who fired at you. "I don't want meat. Give me that weapon. The one that throws the spears. I'll give you three feathers."

"The bow and arrows?" the fat orc crows. "Not for three feathers."

"Three for the bow, three for the arrows," you offer. 

"Deal," the fat orc beckons. "Come down, then, you creepy-crawly-thing."

It would, you know, be the easiest thing in the world for him to gut you with his knife as soon as you're on the path and take their prize. But they didn't put a blade in you last time, and why would they now? You're their only source of the feathers they covet. You slide over the edge of the rocks and drop down onto the orcs' level. At once they're crowding around you, one pawing roughly at your battered fur coat. You demand that they stay back or you'll take your business elsewhere, and the fat orc shoves them all away. He's taken the bow and arrow from the small orc and hands them to you without delay. You give him his feathers and he cackles happily and hides them inside his armour, than asks you mockingly if you even know how to use the bow. You're given a brief lesson, in which your lack of skill puts the whole band in fits of laughter again. Feeling more and more confident, you ask if anyone else might have something worth trading, and despite the leader's angry howls that his treasure's value is being diluted, several of the orcs tussle to find something to interest you. 

You leave without any of the feathers, but with a small metal pot and a piece of horse-leather oilskin that will make a fine, rainproof hood for your brother. Back in the stony nook where you left him, Kili is overwhelmed by the haul, his mouth hanging open as you show him the gifts one by one. You feel elated by the admiration in his eyes. Look at what you've provided for him. Look how well you've done! What creature in the world could be a better brother than you?

\---

You go alone into the mountains a lot that summer, and have more than a dozen encounters with orcs in the next few months. Often you meet your tall friend again, and learn that his name is Radnu, that his fat second-in-command is Smagbal, and that they both get very testy if you ask them why they're always travelling back and forth across the passes. From Smagbal, you learn the names of the tallest peaks and the lands on either side, both in the common tongue and in the local Orcish dialect. He even shows you a map once and you suddenly see the world spread out before you like you were standing on a star looking down. It's mesmerising. You can see the mountain Bagildver, a name you still remember distantly, though the orcs simply call it the Watchtower. When you point out the limestone hills where you and Kili spend your summers, Smagbal has no name for them - it's not a territory they care about. You can't believe how short the distance looks between here and there; it's such a long journey for you, the route chipped out so slowly over many years. 

A few times you have to introduce yourself to strange bands who've heard of the hermit dwarf who haunts the area, and once you're fired upon before you can utter a word and just manage to flee down a ravine without being injured. You're more cautious after that, but you still feel drawn to seek out the orcs again. You haven't caught any more birds for trading, but it's more than that, even more than the thrill of the danger you know you're putting yourself in. It's having someone new to talk to. You didn't know how much you wanted it until now. 

During your absences Kili takes to the bow with a grim determination, and by fall he has already started hunting rabbits with better success than your slings. He tries once for a deer when the herd strays too close to the forest, but the doe flees too far and fast despite her injury and you lose both her and two of the precious arrows. You berate him harshly, since you're not sure yet that you can make ammunition yourself. He bears your anger in silence, hunched with his knees drawn up and his chin hidden behind his arms. 

You finish shouting at last, the blood still pounding in your ears, and he mutters. "Just wanted to give you something. You go away all the time now. I want you to stay with me."

"Why would that be worth the risk?" you snarl. "I always come back!"

Kili hides his face in his arms and mumbles something. You demand that he speak up, and just loud enough to make out the words he replies, "You're more like them goblins each time."

"What? What's that mean?" you reach out to grab his shoulder, make him face you, and he jerks away, shoving himself to his feet and scrambling off into the forest. You shout after him but let him go. You're angry that he's trying to take your new friends from you, and aching with a hurt you can't explain, that doesn't even make sense in your head. He doesn't come back that evening, nor during the night, and your anger festers into fear as morning breaks and there's still no sign of him. What have you done? Why did you have to shout at him? He was just trying to do something good, and now he's tripped and broken his leg, or been overcome by the cold in the night, or worse, what if the orcs have found him, what if they don't take as kindly to him as they have to you? The thoughts go round and round in your head like hunted rabbits. 

You can't stand waiting. You saw Kili leave towards the mountains, and early that morning you make off on your own. 

It's just past noon when you come across a pack of orcs, marching fast under a hot sun, though you know they hate that. Your friend Radnu is at the lead again, but he doesn't stop when you hail him. He shouts at you, "Off, off with you, not-dwarf! There's places to go and fun to be had!" 

You hurry in close and run to keep up. "What do you mean? Where are you going?" Your worry about Kili is pushed aside by your curiosity. 

A few of the orcs chortle behind you and the leader grins. "You want to join, not-dwarf? There'll be meat and more at the end."

A hunt! Yes, you want that - a way to take your mind off the fight with Kili, a gift to accompany the apology you're already planning for when you find him. You haven't brought your sling, but Radnu roars back in his own language and an axe is passed up from the back and pressed into your hands. It's roughly made and small even for a dwarf, but you feel stronger as soon as you wrap your fingers around the handle. For the rest of the day you run with the orcs, just barely keeping up as they leave the mountains and travel across the tundra. You're almost exhausted, but you're also starting to realise there aren't deer herds here, and this isn't boar country. The orcs are heading towards the farmlands below the Ettenmoors. 

It's a raid.

A lump grows in your throat. What do you do? Could you just make some excuse and run? What if they get angry? There's no cover here. They'd put an arrow in your back before you got twenty steps. You'll just go with it, see what happens. There'll be a chance to slip away soon, no doubt.

In the red light of the sunset, the orcs reach a sprawling farmstead at the edge of the human roads, and without hesitation they attack. Even as your thoughts lock up, you hear yourself yelling a battle cry in chorus with them, charging in with Radnu beside you. And then you see the farmhands dashing from their plows, and the killing starts, and you have been here before, you’re suddenly a child again and all the screams sound like Ma’s voice. There are orcs all around and behind, and Radnu is hacking a fallen man's neck again and again, and the blood's on the fresh-turned soil, it's on your arm, it's a cloying stench in the air. A gap opens up in the chaos and you run, run, run.

A long time later, you find your legs giving out and you crawl into the nearest ditch and sleep there, with the wind whistling cold over your head. The little axe is still in your hand, and you want to throw it away, but you can't - metal tools are so precious to you and Kili. You wake before dawn with your throat dry and your head pounding from thirst, and start out again. Eventually you cross one of the thin streams out of the mountains and drink, then hurry on again, always looking back over your shoulder. 

That night you reach the forest at last, and wearily pick your way back to the camp. Kili is waiting there with a fire, fresh fish, and tears on his cheeks. He leaps up before you've even emerged out of the trees, waiting for you to speak. But your throat is dry and your thoughts are silent as the dead. After a while he says, "You came back."

You nod without really processing the question. He moves in and throws his arms around your shoulders. "Thought you left me. Thought you run 'way to join them goblins!" 

You feel dizzy and your limbs are numb. The axe falls from one hand and you rest your face against the side of your brother's head. 

"We should go south," you rasp. "It's almost winter. We've left it too long."

\---

It is a bad winter.

You have to move caves three times because of flooding, and the rain ruins several of your sweet potato plots. You ration as best you can, but hunger becomes a daily companion. Too soon the days are short and the air is bitterly cold. Bad dreams full of blood take your sleep more nights than not and during the day you can’t find the energy to leave the cave. Instead you sit in the entrance and watch the rain drizzle over the clay lip you built a few years back to direct the torrents outwards. Kili harvests what potatoes he can, climbs cabbage trees to get at the tender hearts, and shoots whatever small game he can find. Using the orc pot, he has been experimenting with different plants for tea. He is always making you drink them, one new flavour after another. Eventually he settles on a favourite, something he calls Broomtree, and makes it almost every night, pushing a whittled cup at you until you take it and drink just to stop him bothering you.

You wish he’d go away. You just want to be alone.

“I think you’re sick, Fili,” he tells you one day, standing over you with a bark plate of roasted rabbit and grubs. The rain pounds on the leaves outside, ceaseless out of the darkening sky.

“What?” you ask, glancing up at him. You’re not sure how long he’s been standing there.

“You dun’ talk,” he says, taking your hands one by one and wrapping them around the meal he’s made. “You got some’in in you, Fili, draining the life out of you. I’m scared.”

“I’m fine,” you say, picking at the food. “It’s the cold.”

He shakes his head and goes deeper into the cave to eat with his back to the wall. You can feel him watching you.

The rain clears that night and leaves icy fingers behind, creeping under the blankets and into the crevices of your clothes. You weren’t sleeping anyway, but there's even less chance of it now. You start to think that it will be easier if you don’t survive the winter. You’re just weighing Kili down. As you look out past the dwindling fire to the rustling forest, a biting gust whips through the cave and across your face. Kili wriggles closer without opening his eyes and rolls onto his side to press along the length of your body, his breathing soft and even. You can feel his heartbeat even through both your clothes. You can't leave him. You must never leave him alone. You _must_ stay for him, stay until the bad dreams stop and the darkness fades and you can be his brother again. 

You close your eyes and finally sleep comes. And it seems that when you open them next, there are spring flowers pushing up out of the soil and the birds are making nests. It feels like both the longest and shortest winter in your memory. And then one day, before your bones have really started to warm, you find that Kili is packing everything up and tying it tight with flax straps for travelling.

“You don’t need to do that,” you say. You don't ever want to go back into the orc-ridden mountains again. “I don’t think we should go north this summer.”

“We’re not going north,” Kili answers, smiling a wicked grin. “We’re going west.”

You feel lines tightening on your brow. “West? What is there west?”

Kili shakes his head, pulling a log close and beginning to hollow it out for the fire. “I dunno, brother. But don’t you want to find out?”


	4. life against the anvil

Thorin returns to Ered Luin that summer to find that Dis has taken charge of opening new trade lines with the men of the Far Downs. A welcoming party rides out to meet him as he enters the valley below the main gates, but his sister's too busy to join them, and he has to go and find her in the accountants' chambers. She's carrying a pile of papers under one arm gesturing at two young dwarves with her quill. When she spots Thorin, she shoos them off and checks her hands for ink before she embraces him, kissing his cheeks. He's startled to notice that she's taken the last of the mourning beads out of her braids, and has a playful design woven into her beard. 

"You look well, Dis," he says cautiously, squeezing her shoulder.

"I'm exhausted. Busy, busy all the time. It's terrible," she gripes, but he can hear the cheer in her voice. He laughs and lets his hand drop away.

They walk around one of the outer ramparts, catching up on each others' lives. It's more than a year since he left her in the Blue Mountains, but they've traded the occasional letter, and he's kept an ear out for news of her. 

"Balin warned me you have a suitor, little sister," he teases, not quite sure how she'll react. She gives a derisive snort.

"I have no patience for silly young dwarves," she says, which he notes is not a dismissal. He'll have to find out about this fellow, then - he doesn't know the family well, but he's pretty sure Dori has an account of the dwarf's reputation. Thorin will put put his foot down if the match isn't suitable, though he trusts Dis to know the difference. Even her first marriage was very late, well past the age when their mother and grandmothers were already bearing children. His sister is nothing if not discerning - this new lad has high standards to pass, Thorin thinks with a chuckle.

But he also believes it could be good for her. It has been ten years since the goblin raid on the road from Moria, and he wants to see her with a family again. He knows she'd tell him not to be old-fashioned, that she doesn't need babies to distract her, that nothing can replace what she's lost - but he can't help thinking it anyway. Maybe he's just being selfish. Maybe he's the one trying to fill the hole that the boys left in his life.

"Stop your brooding, you sour old crow," Dis elbows him suddenly. "I know what you're thinking, but we're supposed to be talking happy news. Come on, I'll show you the new meeting hall. The carving is exquisite."

Thorin doesn't plan to stay the whole year, but winter arrives with a new enemy that no one is ready to fight. A local lord wants to build a new castle with Dwarven masonry, and a party from the Blue Mountains goes to survey the site. They return too early, with news that the human town there is suffering under a worse winter fever than any in living memory. It's rare for such illnesses to be passed between humans and dwarves, but not unheard of - and very soon after they arrive, the survey team begin to show signs.

Quarantine is administered at once, and all exposed dwarves shut up in a disused wing of the mountain, with a team of healers and some dedicated kin who refuse to leave their side. Thorin's folk beg him not to see Dis until she is confirmed healthy or the sickness has passed, but when the messages coming out of the quarantine hall place Dis' name among the list of the bedridden, he cannot hold himself back. He threatens and nearly blackmails his way past the guards, seizes a dwarf in a nurses' tunic to guide him and finds his sister in the farthest ward. She is pale and fevered beneath thick blankets, but she turns her head and smiles to see his face.

"You shouldn't be in here," she says in a thin voice, and tucks her hands against her chest to keep him from touching her. "I wanted you to be safe."

"We will both be safe," Thorin growls, gripping her arm through the bedclothes. "You are a daughter of kings, Dis. You will not be felled by some human pestilence. You will fight this!"

"I've seen my share," she pulls in a laboured breath, "of fighting, Thorin. I've lost a brother, a husband and a mountain to it. I'm not ashamed to be tired."

"Don't speak like that!" he pleads.

"Don't weep, brother," she whispers, turning her head towards the wall. "I'll be with my boys. My golden Fili and my little Kili. I'll find them at last, like I promised I would."

That night Thorin sleeps in the front ward with the others who haven't yet shown any symptoms. In the morning, a nurse wakes him. Thorin can see it in his face before he says it. His sister is dead. And he tries not to weep, as she asked, and he tries to believe that she is at peace now. But he does weep, though he doesn't sicken, and he leaves the quarantine alone, finally the last of his grandfather's line. In the dark recesses of his mind he feels sure that if her sons had been here, she would have resisted, she would have lived for them. But he was not enough for her.

\---

The plague is contained, but it takes more lives than they've lost in all the time since the battles at Moria, and once the danger within has passed Thorin finds that the dwarves of the Blue Mountains are divided. Reports from the ravens say the fever among men has faded with the coming spring, but many do not think it is worth the risk to reopen trade with the humans. Thorin knows they can't sustain themselves long; humans supply a significant portion of their larders, and even if he can bear to ask for charity from the Iron Hills, each shipment will take months, and they will only get it for so long. Worse, they've known since their first surveys that Ered Luin has little to offer in terms of precious metals and gems, and the iron here is not of the highest quality. They've earned their keep mostly on the craftsmanship of the tools and weapons they make. If they let their trade lines whither, the humans will simply get what they need from other sources, and it will hard to win back their coin.

"They've grown too cosy in these hills," Balin complains. "They've already forgotten how hard we worked to keep up with the world."

Thorin has retired with him after a long and heated meeting amoung the heads of all the families. No consensus has been reached, and none is on the horizon. Dwarves can argue on the same topic for weeks if nothing interrupts them. 

"We can't wait for their fears to settle," Thorin says darkly. "We've already lost contracts because we're afraid to step out our front doors. We need to act now. These mountains will feed some of us for a few seasons, if it is only the ones who want to stay. The rest of us can resettle closer to the trade routes, set up forges on open land."

"Leave the mountains?" Balin shakes his head. "Become wanderers _again_ , go back to the open road like we were after Erebor? You think even the most restless youngsters will follow you, with the memory of the fever breathing down their necks?"

"It won't be forever," Thorin insists. "And plenty have followed me to worse places with less reason."

"That they have," Balin agrees, his thick eyebrows rising up his brow. He sighs. "And I suppose I'll be marching out with the rest. I can't let you go thinking you're rid of me."

It is a much reduced company of Erebor that rides out of the Blue Mountains late that August. They are less than sixty artisans and builders, and a handful of those wives who have no fear of the rough living ahead. Those with children have left them in the care of relatives, as is the dwarvish custom when the parents must seek a dangerous road.

The days are already growing short, but Thorin has gone ahead to secure purchase of a large plot outside of Bree. Their new home is a number of terraced acres against a cliff over which a small river pours out of the South Downs, pooling down in the various levels until it flows on to the village. The soil is thin, not much good for farming, but the stone is good, solid granite and the dwarves work quickly in the fading summer to excavate caves for the forges and set up waterwheels to drive the bellows. By the time the first frost is biting their heels, they have a fine set of workshops and a large, stone meeting hall, built from the same slabs they chiselled out of the cliff. It's simple, satisfying work, and Thorin labours just as hard as any of his dwarves and lives in dorm tents beside them. There is no room for kings here. 

Within a year their workload is far more than they'd hoped for, and they're so busy at the forges that they have hire local men to turn their tent city into a proper little town. Some of the dwarves, with the bustling human markets close enough to ride to, have turned from supplying the major demands – tools for farming and industry, and weapons – to more delicate novelties such as toys, musical instruments, and stained glass. Not since Dale was still standing did the people of Erebor have a chance to show such skills. Thorin is beginning to think a permanent outpost here might be worth maintaining, though he knows the dwarves yearn for stone above their heads and deep caverns to keep out the weather and threats of assault. They will never love wooden houses and open vistas, though they're well adapted to them by now. Such future plans linger in his mind most days, though his time is dominated by the practical management of the town. 

He never says it aloud, but he misses Dis deeply. She knew how to make people work together; she would have kept the town running like a well-oiled machine, though Balin makes a decent administrator in her stead. Thorin wonders what he will be leaving behind when he finally passes, without heirs or great kingdoms. Will anyone remember him as the last of the Durin line, or will the history books peter out at the names of his father and grandfather, saying only, 'there were children, but now they gone'?

\---

Thorin is with Dwalin at the forge, testing a new plate metal for strength, when a young fellow – Dori's smallest brother, Thorin forgets his name – runs in looking for him, saying there's a man on horse demanding to speak to the chief of the dwarves. Thorin wipes his hands and goes out in his smithy's apron, not in any hurry, expecting some rich farmer putting on airs. Instead he finds it's the mayor of Bree himself and two of his sons, a swarthy man who's known more for his fair judgements than for his manners. 

Thorin knows this must be something more serious than an order of ploughshares. He should have seen it coming – some of the dwarves who were in the Bree taverns last week said they were getting foul looks from other customers, and the woodsmen who brought their horses for shodding this morning were tense and unfriendly. But his sister always tempered others' anger with hospitality, so he takes off his apron and invites the visitors into the meeting hall, sending the youngster – Ori, that's his name – for honeycakes and tea.

"What's this about?" he asks, once the men have steaming cups in their hands and the hall is quiet. They've had complaints about the noise and smell of the forges before, though most of Bree are very keen on the money the dwarves' craft brings into the town.

"It's a nasty business," the mayor harrumphs through his flabby lips. "You keep a close eye on all your dwarves, don't you, lad?"

A muscle twitches in Thorin's neck, but tries not to show his annoyance. He's not a 'lad'. Damn men, arrogant and patronising. 

"I like to think I know all my folk well, yes," he says patiently. "Is one of them under some suspicion?"

"I'd say you're all under suspicion right now, my friend," the mayor replies, and Thorin entwines his fingers to keep himself from balling his fists. "For the last year there's been robberies all along the outer farms. We weren't sure until last month, but it's definitely a band of dwarves. The scum themselves have been spotted twice, but it's all the same pack, I'm sure of it."

Thorin's brow contracts. "Has anyone been hurt?"

"Not yet, but the rustler who saw them last week says they're armed, and have a foul disposition about them. It's only a matter of time."

Thorin sighs. "These are no kin of mine. My people have no need to steal. We're well provisioned, and any troublemakers would have been brought to my attention long before now."

"Well, you won't cure suspicion so easily," the mayor rumbles. "There's no other dwarf settlement this side of the Brandywine, unless you think these criminals came all the way from Moria. People ain't happy, Mr Son of Thrain, and your business will suffer if these fiends aren't caught or killed."

Thorin grits his teeth, not bothering to point out that Moria is unoccupied. "What do you expect me to do?"

"Well, go and find them, and deal with them by your laws!" the mayor cries. "Or they'll be hung according to ours!"

He thumps his fist on the table. His teacup jumps half an inch. 

Thorin grimaces. He can't think of any dwarves, besides those working within a mile of where he sits, who would be this far from their mountains. He isn't convinced that the perpetrators even are dwarves, not on the word of two witnesses who might have been peering through the dark or over a distance. Small goblins or poverty-ridden human children, more likely. But if they are dwarves - well, that is a dark thought, but the mayor is right. If they are turning to common banditry, then they need to be dealt with. Not just for the general reputation of Thorin's people, but for their own sake. Debasing themselves like this is unthinkable. 

"We're not hunters," Thorin skirts his answer to buy time to think. "I have no idea how we would even find them."

"From the pattern of the farms attacked, I have a pretty good idea where they must be hiding," the mayor nods, pulling a map out of his pocket and shoving the tea and food aside to spread it out. He gestures with one stubby finger, "There's wild woods all along here, very rough countryside. I know trackers who hunt game around the borders. If these bandits are more solid than ghosts, they'll sniff them out."

"Very well," Thorin says reluctantly, studying the worn map. "Send us a tracker by the end of the week, and I'll take a party into the forest. But I won't waste days hunting for a quarry none of us have even seen. If we can't find them soon, you must deal with them yourselves."

"Aye, I understand," the mayor nods. "The town is pretty fired up about it. If there's another break-in, I expect we can rally a militia to drive them into the open like foxes. Then they'll learn what common thieves deserve."

Thorin shudders at the thought, but he shakes the mayor's hand as he leaves. No sense inflaming the situation any further. Once the clip-clop of the horses has faded, he spits on the ground. 

"Can I help, Mr Thorin Sir?" Ori asks earnestly. 

"Go and fetch Dwalin," Thorin says, watching the path where the men disappeared. "We have a hunt to plan."


	5. strike and ricochet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading, your mere presence is very much appreciated! I'm afraid my regular updates will be suspended for a few days, as I have a major report due and a friend visiting for the weekend. I'll get back into this as soon as humanly possible. I know, I know, and it's on a cliffhanger too. _What a fucking orc-face._

Thorin’s hunting party spends a day and a half riding along the border of the old forest. They’re a party of five of Thorin’s most reliable young warriors, plus their human tracker, but there’s little talking and no mirth. In fact, last night Dwalin used some very unpleasant words while only Thorin was around to hear them. None of them like being the errand boys of Bree, but they agreed that is in the interest of the whole town recapturing these rogues before their thievery turns to something worse. 

When the tracker finds a trail he insists isn’t from an animal, they leave the ponies and continue on foot. “They can’t be deep,” the man says. “This forest doesn’t like outsiders, and dwarves least of all. It’s the axes.”

“We’re not here for firewood,” Thorin says, walking close behind. There’s no birdsong, he notices, but perhaps their approach is noisy enough to make the animals silent.

After about an hour of meandering, they come across a fresh campsite in the shelter of a huge, moss-draped boulder. There’s a bare footprint in the mud, and Thorin would call it a dwarf’s or he’s a cave troll. He tugs his glove off and digs his hand into the ashes. The fire was burning last night at the latest. Either their quarry left this morning, or they’re still here.

“Eh, over here,” Dwalin whispers. Thorin raises his head, because Dwalin does not whisper for anything. He steps over a twist of creepers and around the boulder.

Dwalin has lifted up the branches of a low-lying bush. Beneath it lies a crumpled pile of blankets and odds-and-ends, including a small cooking pot and a blue scarf that Thorin recognises as Bree needlework. They’ve been shoved haphazardly into their hiding place. Only a blind man would have missed them.

Thorin raises his head and turns quickly to survey the forest. “They were here moments ago. They heard us coming,” he straightens his back and shouts into the thick threes. “Show yourself, my friends. We mean you no harm.”

Not even a breeze stirs the forest. And then there is the faintest thrum. Something whips past Thorin and clatters against the boulder behind him, chipping off a hunk of moss as it falls to the ground. Dwalin gives a roar as he snatches it up.

“Orc arrow!”

Thorin is already sprinting for the gap in the trees from which the arrow was loosed. The diagonal corpse of a fallen tree blocks the way. He bounds up and off the nearest stone, catching himself with his hands on the tree’s rough bark and swinging his body up and over in one smooth movement to land in the ferns beyond. He glimpses a dark flash of movement between the leaves a few yards ahead and feels his blood pound in his ears as he gives chase, drawing his sword with the ringing whisper of well-oiled steel. The forest clutches at his hair and looms in his path, but he can see a solid wall of boulders ahead and adjusts his trajectory to drive his prey towards the stones. He’s not a hunter, he told the mayor, but he still knows how to trap an enemy.

“Hey! Hey, you!”

Thorin’s first thought is that one of his people is shouting a warning, but even as he turns his head he realises he doesn’t recognise the voice. When he grabs a sapling to swerve his momentum around to the left, he sees a strange dwarf stepping out from behind a vine-smothered tree close by. As soon as Thorin’s eyes are on him, the dwarf turns and bolts, his dirty blond hair flying out behind him. Thorin looks back at his original prey, but the forest there is empty. The archer has vanished while he was distracted.

Thorin growls and jabs his sword towards where the archer disappeared as Dwalin and the others sprint up beside him. “One of them went that way! I’ll get the other.”

Before they can argue he is already breaking into a run, his eyes locked on the bobbing head of the bandit rapidly vanishing into the undergrowth. The figure of the strange dwarf shoots upwards as the land ahead rises up a low mound, clothed in fern. As he clambers up to the top, he looks back over his shoulder. Thorin sees a young face, no more than a boy.

He’s almost at the bottom of the mound. As the stranger straightens up, Thorin pushes off the roots of the nearest tree, hits the slope running and slashes out with his sword when he’s in reach. The steel tip cuts through ragged cloth and carves a line into the flesh at the back of the dwarf’s thigh. The bandit gives a sharp cry like a dog and twists towards Thorin as his leg gives out. 

A knife appears from somewhere in the folds of his filthy tunic. He tries to rise onto one knee, lunging at Thorin, who kicks the blade out of his hand without hesitation. The boy catches himself on hands and knees, his lips drawn back from his teeth in a wild snarl, and launches himself at Thorin’s waist despite the deadly bite of the sword waiting for him there. Thorin holds his blade away and brings his knee up to strike the bandit under the chin, knocking him back.

He brings his sword forward as he approaches the bandit, who is lying on his back in the ferns with the blood of a bitten lip shining red on his chin. The dwarf is stunned long enough for Thorin to put a foot on his chest and bring the tip of the sword around to his chin.

Before he can demand a surrender, there’s the crack of a twig and a savage cry, a noise of pure fury that sounds like an old, familiar word.

_“FILI!”_

Thorin turns just as the second bandit collides with him, knocking him sideways. His sword is pinned underneath his body and the dwarf on top of him has his knees around Thorin’s waist and he slams his fist into Thorin’s face, over and over, not with any skill but with a rage hot enough that for a moment all Thorin can do is raise one arm to shield his head and clutch for the other dwarf’s throat.

Then there’s a chorus of yells and the ground thuds with the approach of his company. The weight is lifted off Thorin, and there’s a chaotic tussle. Dwalin’s voice bellows so loud that a few leaves tumble from the branches above, the human tracker gives a squeak and backs out of the fray and a lot of fern stems get broken. When Thorin leaps to his feet he finds that Ginnar and Hornbor have swords and axes pointed at the first outlaw to make him stay down, while Dwalin has the second one in a crushing headlock. 

“Stop!” Thorin roars. “Stop, do not hurt them!”

Five faces turn to look at him with raised brows. Thorin picks up his sword and wipes the dirt and blood from the blade. He shoots a warning look at where the second bandit is turning slightly purple, “Dwalin, I said _stop_ killing him.”

Dwalin gives a surprised grunt and lets the smaller dwarf breathe. Holding the bandit with one arm, he grabs the bow off the boy’s belt and shakes it at Thorin. “Look at their weapons, Thorin! They’re friends of orcs!”

“I’m not blind, but I have more urgent questions,” Thorin turns toward the injured bandit, looming over him. “What is your name, lad?”

The boy glares up at him silently. It’s hard to make out his features under the dirt on his face and the uncombed tangle of his hair and beard, but he isn’t in his thirties yet. And golden hair is so rare among their people… but it can’t be, Thorin _must_ have imagined that shouted word. He feels a swell of fury overtake him, that he should be so weak and desperate at the mere hint of a lost name, and he raises his voice and jabs his sword towards the boy’s face. “Tell me! Who was your mother? _Who was she?_ ” 

The threat of the shining steel unlocks the bandit’s tongue. He rasps, “Dis. Daughter of Thrain.”

There is a mutter from the surrounding dwarves. Thorin feels his throat close over and his heart clench in his chest. It cannot be. It _cannot_ be.

Ginnar snorts. “He’s a thief and a liar, Thorin. Many folk know your history. He’s trying to save his own skin.”

“Aye, Thorin, it’s impossible,” Dwalin rumbles.

The injured bandit makes no attempt to defend himself, simply staring at Thorin with his brows furrowed and spite in his eyes. Thorin looks at his companion, still struggling in Dwalin’s immovable arms. He strides across to him and shoves the boy’s matted hair aside to see the beardless face beneath. The bandit makes a committed attempt to bite him before Thorin pulls his hand away.

Thorin meets Dwalin’s eyes. “And my sister’s nose and mouth? Did he steal that, too?” 

Dwalin’s eyes widen and he looks down at the dwarf in his arms. Thorin returns his gaze to the dwarf still lying on the ground, fingers digging into the earth as he waits to meet his fate. Thorin sheathes his sword and points at him. “You. What sigil did your mother take on her wedding day?”

The boy doesn’t answer. Thorin growls. “In what year was your grandfather Thrain born?”

The boy shakes his head. Thorin stomps towards him, determined to get some definitive truth out of him. “Answer! In what battle of Moria did you father kill the goblin captain, Relg the Bloody?”

“I don’t know!” the bandit shouts, throwing his arm out towards Thorin. “By Durin’s nose, I was a child! I don’t _remember!_ ”

Thorin sucks in a sharp breath. ‘Durin’s nose’. No dwarf of Erebor or beyond would dare make such a disrespectful oath, even outside of Thorin’s hearing. He has known only one person in all his life who got away with such humour – she’d curse, ‘Durin’s nose!’, over any small misfortunate, like broken eggs or finding her children had walked mud into her carpets. She knew it made her brother flinch and smile behind his exasperation. 

Thorin turns to Dwalin. “Let him go.”

“Thorin—”

“I said let him go. Let them both go,” he turns his gaze on the others. “They are my nephews.”

Dwalin hesitates for a moment, then rolls his eyes and relaxes his arms. The boy wriggles out of his grip and sprints back to his brother’s side, pushing past Ginnar and Hornbor with no apparent concern for their raised sword and axe. He pulls his brother’s arm around his shoulders to help him to his feet. 

“Kili,” Thorin says, and the younger bandit looks up at once, jerking his head up with wide eyes. That is the final proof for Thorin. No liar would react so quickly to a false name. Thorin clears his throat, “Your brother needs bandaging. Don’t make him stand on that leg.”

In fact he can see that the older boy – that _Fili_ – is already a little pale-faced from the blood he’s lost. After a long silence, Kili lowers his brother back onto the ground and allows Ginnar to get close enough to cut the threadbare wool away from Fili’s wound. He clucks his tongue as he makes Fili lie on his side so he can survey the cut on the back of his leg, wash it with a clean bandage – the boy grits his teeth but makes no sound – and tie the cloth right round. “It needs suturing and medicine, Thorin.”

“Balin knows sword wounds better than anyone,” Thorin says. “Come, he just has to get out of the forest and back to the ponies.”

He does not miss the unhappy glance that the two youngsters share, but Kili allows Ginnar to pull Fili upright and the three of them link arms over shoulders and follow Thorin, with the others close behind. Dwalin is shaking his head to himself, but doesn’t question his leader again. As they walk, Thorin tries to get them talking. He has so many questions in his mind, loose threads that he can't connect yet. But with the human tracker nearby, he starts with the practical. 

"Are you part of a gang? Are there other bandits in this forest?"

Fili pauses while he eases his wounded leg over a fallen tree. After a while he says, with a tinge of embarrassment, "I don't know what that word means, 'bandits'."

"Thieves. Criminals. You have been robbing farms like common goblins."

His nephew raises his head sharply, and suddenly the words are pouring out. "We took food! A little food - the forest here doesn't have the game we're used to, hunting is hard, the plants are different, and when we decided to winter here it only got worse. We took what we needed to survive, and maybe a scrap of cloth. We didn't want to hurt anybody."

"Then why did you fire on us?" Thorin turns his gaze on the younger dwarf. "Kili? You shot at us."

But it's Fili who answers once again. "It was a warning shot. Kili wasn't aiming for you."

Thorin's brows contract and keeps his eyes on Kili. "And where did you get the orcish bow in the first place, Kili?"

The younger dwarf looks at his brother, features tense with some unspoken exchange. After a moment, Fili says. "We killed an orc two years ago, when he attacked us."

"And is your brother mute or simply an idiot, that you must speak for him?" Thorin snarls. 

"Refusing to answer you doesn’t make him an idiot."

"You must learn respect, nephew. I don't know what peasant raised you all these years, but they clearly taught you no manners—”

"No one raised us. I looked after Kili by myself, and he looked after me."

Thorin stops and turns to look at him. He runs his gaze over their skinny frames and bare feet, the way Fili leans away from Ginnar even though it must be hurting his leg. He shakes his head. "That's absurd. You could never—”

"It's the truth. We haven't had a friend in the world since Ma died."

Thorin's eyes widen. "How did you know that? That she is dead?"

"She was killed by the goblins," Fili says, looking suddenly at Kili and then back to Thorin. "She must have been. She never came to find us."

Thorin's heart drags on his sinews. "No, Fili. Your mother survived the goblin raid unscathed. We searched for you, but she died the winter before last, in a plague."

The whole party comes to a halt as Fili stops. He stares at Thorin. "That can't be."

"I assure you, it is. I was with her until the end. She died with your names on her lips."

As soon as he says it, he wishes he could step back a moment and choose his words again. Both the youngsters stay silent, and Kili’s head drops and doesn’t look up again. 

At Fili’s pace, they make slow progress out of the forest. The sky is already burnished red by the time they emerge onto the grassy verge where the ponies are tied up by a small stream. There won’t be time to ride back to the dwarf town today, so they settle in for the night, eating dried meat and biscuits rather than bothering with a fire.

Thorin cannot take his eyes off the two small figures hunched together at the edge of the group. He remembers a pair of laughing, round-faced children, clinging to their mother’s skirts and chasing their uncle to the edge of the camp every time he left it. He remembers small voices crying, “Don’t leave, Thorin! Take us too! Take us with you!” But here are two hard-eyed youths, thin and wiry as rangers, watchful like caged animals. Fili whispers in his brother’s ear every now and then; Kili does nothing but glare from under his scruffy fringe. Thorin’s instinct is to take them in his arms as he used to, make them remember that they are family, that he wants only to protect them. But Fili’s shoulders tense, Kili looks ready to bolt when any of the other dwarves pass within a few feet of them, and Thorin's cheek is still smarting from Kili's fists. 

Ginnar takes the first watch, promising to wake Thorin at midnight. He doesn’t think he’ll sleep, but soon he watches his nephews lie down in the grass and curl up around each other. Some of the weight leaves his mind. Before he knows it he’s dead to the world.

He comes back to life reluctantly, blinking to find that the darkness is still complete in the sky. Has Ginnar woken him? No, there’s no one nearby, and he can hear nothing but the rhythmic shush of the wind through the grass. He raises his head to count his companions, though they’re only black shadows around him. They’re all where he left them, and he can see Ginnar sitting upright on a stone nearby, looking along the verge towards tomorrow's route.

But he’s sure something’s wrong. It’s an instinct that deserves attention, honed from years of living outside of safe caverns or well-guarded halls. He holds his breath and keeps himself totally still, listening for any sound – or any absence of sound – that’s out of place. He thinks maybe, maybe—

“ _OH, no you don’t!_ ”

Dwalin’s bellow breaks open the quiet. Thorin is on his feet in a split second, sword in hand, and around him the others struggle to their feet, Hornbor giving a groan of complaint at being woken. “What? What’s happening?”

The clouds part a little, and the moon reveals Dwalin striding back towards them from a good fifty feet away from the camp. He’s dragging a writhing Kili under one arm and has his other hand buried in the scruff of Fili’s neck. Thorin realises the shadowed depression where they were lying in the grass is empty, and he didn't even see it. 

“Knew they’d bolt,” Dwalin winks at Thorin, shoving Fili back into the cluster of befuddled dwarves, where he sits down heavily on a fallen log. “They were just waiting for Ginnar to look away from the woods.”

“You can’t make us go with you!” Fili cries out, clutching his wounded leg. “We won’t stay. We don’t belong with you!”

Thorin throws his sword back down by his bedroll and strides over, his hands on his hips. “You are descendents of kings!” he snaps, rage boiling behind his eyes. “And you want to live like filthy weasels? Are you _mad_?”

But Fili wrinkles his nose and goes silent once again. Thorin grits his teeth and looks around the yawning company. “Keep them separate. Dwalin – sleep on the outside by Kili, and Fili will be on the far end with me. I’ll take the next watch. They’re not to speak to each other unless I am there to hear it.”

He stands over Fili until the boy gets up and, with a show of great reluctance, moves to the hilly side of the camp. Thorin offers him his blanket to lie on, but his nephew won’t even acknowledge it, lying down on the grassy earth as if it were a far more comfortable pillow. He rolls over on his side to sleep facing away from Thorin, his bad leg extended awkwardly into the grass. 

\---

When his watch is over and he’s woken Hornbor, Thorin sleeps only lightly. He dreams of his sister hurrying away from him, her face turned aside as if she can’t bear to look at him. At dawn he is awoken by Fili getting up and limping away towards the stream. He raises himself onto one elbow, rubbing his eyes. Fili is crouched on his good leg, cupping water in his hands and drinking, one palmful after another, his gold hair turned grayish with dust. Thorin feels like he is in a dream. For moment he’s overcome with a humiliating fear that it was a trick, that these criminals have made a fool of him. Then there’s the grunt of one of the others rolling over and Fili turns his head quickly, like a startled bird, and his profile is as familiar to Thorin as the back of his hand – or more specifically, as the nose on his face. 

He knows he won’t get back to sleep, so he wakes the others. Once they’re back at the town he won’t feel so nervous. On his own territory, he’ll know how to deal with this sudden change in his pedigree. 

They make slow progress despite the early start. Kili refuses to even go near the ponies, even when his brother tells him to stop being such a coward. Thorin can hear a note of exhaustion in Fili’s voice, and wonders if he lost sleep too. At last Dwalin gets off and says, quite cheerfully, that he’ll walk at the back with Kili, which also means there’s a pony each and the rest of them won’t be taking turns walking. Kili’s eyes go wide but he straightens his back and marches on in front of Dwalin with his chin jutting out. 

As the day wears on, Thorin notices that Dwalin and Kili are getting further and further behind. He calls to them, asking if they need a break, but Dwalin raises his hand to show they were fine. When Thorin looks back a few minutes later, he sees that the two of them seem to be deep in conversation. His gut clenches with annoyance (he won’t admit it as jealousy) that Kili refuses to speak to him, his own uncle, but is opening up to Dwalin, who has nearly strangled him – _twice_. 

Their human tracker leaves them at the fork of the road leading to Bree. Thorin asks him to tell the mayor that the criminals have been apprehended and will be dealt with in accordance with their crimes. The tracker agrees to do so, but there’s a mutter in his voice that Thorin doesn’t like the sound of.

It is late early afternoon when they enter the dwarf town, and many of the workers have broken for lunch and come crowding up to greet them, staring at the stranger riding close behind his uncle. Thorin swings himself down from his pony and hands the reins off for someone to take her to the stables, and then turns to Fili. His nephew is looking out across the clustered dwarves, his eyes glazed and his jaw slack. Thorin realises he must not have seen so many of his kind together for almost twelve years. It will be a great shock to the mind.

"Come on, lad, get down now," he says impatiently, holding the pony's bridle to keep the animal still. "We'll go into the hall and there’ll be food."

Fili doesn’t reply at once, and when he does his voice was faint. "Yes," he says, wrapping his hands around his knee to lift his bad leg over the pony so until he is sitting side-saddle. It seems to take him a great effort, and he breathes in deeply before he speaks again. "Yes, I..."

Thorin sees his eyelids half-close as he overbalances. He leaps forward just as Fili's body slides off the pony, catching him around the chest. The sudden weight takes him by surprise and he ends up on his knees with his nephew sliding out of his lap. Fili's limbs are boneless and his hooded eyes stare up at the sky behind Thorin's shoulder. Sweat has broken out on his brow, running in rivulets through the dirt on his face.

"Fili!" Thorin barks, shaking his shoulders. "Fili, answer me!"

The boy blinks and raises his head, gripping Thorin's arm. "I'm alright," he wheezes. "I think I'm alright."

Thorin can see clearly that he isn’t. His face is chalky, and there’s an unhealthy flush in his neck. He hears running feet slapping the packed dirt and Kili darts between the gathered dwarves, spooking one of the ponies and dropping to his knees beside his brother. In a moment, Balin has arrived with Ginnar close behind, and Dwalin has his hands tight on Kili's shoulders, ready to tug him off if he gets in the way. 

“I thought you were looking for bandits, Thorin?” Balin asks Thorin, putting the back of his hand on Fili's brow. “Where’d you pick these strays up from?”

“I’ll explain soon. What’s wrong with him?”

Kili is making small whimpers, twisting his brother’s sleeve in his fists, and Thorin resists the urge to rebuke him. The sight of him is wretched enough as it is without him crying like a child. What did Fili teach him all these years? Not how to behave like a prince, that’s for certain.

"He's wracked in fever," Balin sighs. "Has anyone else been sick?"

"No, but he's wounded," Ginnar says, "Four-inch slash on the back of the leg, and I had nothing to seal it. I thought we could knit it when we got back—”

"You should have sutured it at once," Balin scolds. "Aye, well, too late now. Dori's been making a new ferment for my medicine cabinet, I'll have him extract it within the hour. We'll keep applying it through the night, and we'll know by tomorrow whether it's worked."

“Mr Balin,” Fili whispers, and Balin starts in surprise and frowns at him. Fili raises one shaking hand. "What will you do if it doesn't work?"

Balin meets Thorin's eyes, his mouth a sharp line. Healthy dwarves are hardier than men, but they both know how easily a festered wound can fell even the strongest warrior. Balin shakes his head with a warm smile. "Well, my boy, the wound’s too high for an amputation, so you needn’t worry."

"What?" Kili mumbles, his voice croaking. He reaches his arm across his brother's chest as if to shield him from Balin's prognosis. "What is that, ‘amp-tation’?"

Balin doesn’t answer. Thorin feels ice rushing through his blood. In his mind he sees the sword swinging through the air, hears the cry Fili made as it cut him open. To have only a few unfriendly hours with his resurrected kin, and now this, without knowing what they have been through, without even hearing Fili acknowledge him by name – not even an orc would be so cruel. He holds Balin’s gaze and says, “You must save him.”

The older dwarf nods. He, Ginnar and Thorin heave Fili up and half carry, half drag him towards Balin’s hut.


	6. intimacy in the fever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whelp, a quick update today after all! But it definitely will be the last until after the weekend. Thank you all for your comments, I really do appreciate them and want to work with the feedback I get. My fear right from the beginning of this fic was that I wouldn't be able to realistically portray language (not to mention social) deficits in two people after such a long period of isolation, so I hope what I have attempted reads relatively smoothly.
> 
> P.S. Yes, dwarf toddlers have chest hair. Don't you dare tell me otherwise.

Everything is worse than you imagined it would be. 

It has been so long that you never expected to find other dwarves again, not really. A part of you didn't even believe there _were_ other dwarves in the world, as if all those wandering folk from Erebor were just a childhood dream. And now the dream has sprung to life, and turned to a nightmare, with your Uncle Thorin in the centre of it all. You don't remember Uncle Thorin's face very well from before, though his voice was familiar as soon as he spoke. You remember him only as the anchoring presence that filled the empty place your father left around the hearth. You remember warm arms when the nights were cold and there weren't enough blankets. You remember jokes you didn't understand passed between him and Ma, and the eyes of the whole camp turning towards him whenever he spoke, and the awe in the faces of the younger ones when they looked at him.

The uncle you see now doesn't seem to be the same. There's a weariness about him, and a hard core like a layer of granite beneath shallow earth. He hasn't smiled at you, not once. Even Dwalin smiled, when he caught you and Kili trying to escape back to the forest. You look over your shoulder, clutching tight to the pommel of the pony to keep from falling, and you can see Dwalin right back down the path a way, laughing at your little brother - and Kili is smiling tentatively, so he's not mocking him, he's laughing with him. But when you look ahead at your uncle's profile you see only the cold bearing of a mountain peak.

You must get Kili away. Thorin is clearly ashamed of you both, for the crimes you seem to have committed, for your untidy hair, your bare feet and the dirt on your hands. He thinks you're stupid; perhaps you _are_ stupid. You can't keep up with everything the dwarves are saying, with their accents and their grown-up words. You know Kili has stayed silent partly because he's even more lost than you. It's no wonder Thorin doesn't want you back, and yet he's taking you with him so you can't make things any worse. You must get Kili away from here, take him east again, and then south if you have to, however far you have to go to make sure the dwarves never catch you again.

You wring the reins between your hands. Your thoughts feel sluggish, and your leg hurts very bad. The blood has seeped through the bandage but you're too embarrassed to ask Ginnar if he should change it. It isn't fair. It isn't fair that you've come this far and fought all the winters and all the hunger and all the nightmares and now you must fight your uncle as well. Your head spins with a growing anger at the world, at Thorin, and thirst claws at your throat and beats the rhythm of an anvil between your temples. You don't want to ask to stop and drink, though. It will only make Thorin angrier.

When you reach the town the sight drives some of your anger out and you simply stare. There are dozens of dwarves all around you, emerging out of buildings and skillfully carved caves in the cliff, dwarves of every shape and shade, more people than you imagined could ever exist in one place at a time. There are women in colourful, beaded skirts with their beards threaded and dyed into works of art, and men with braids that you know tell stories of their families, their deeds, their ancestors, even if you don't remember the details of how to read them. Their faces are open and curious, some raising their eyebrows at you, some waving pleasantly. You want to wave back but your limbs feel so heavy now, and your vision is swimming a little.

Thorin is saying something to you, telling you to get off the pony. Your leg shakes when you try to raise it, and you have to lift it with your hands. Maybe you should have asked for water after all. Maybe you should have told someone how much it was hurting. Maybe—

Without any continuity between here and there, you find you're looking up at the sky, Thorin's face looming over you. You must have fallen. You recognise Kili's footsteps, and soon there's other people too. You see Balin like another sliver of the dream, old Balin whose stories you used to adore as a child. They're all talking at once but it's hard to untangle the words. You only know that it's bad. Your wound, the wound Thorin put on you, is inflamed and that's _really_ bad because you can't die of this, a stupid cut on your leg, you can't die and leave Kili here will all these strangers.

Before you know it, you find the sunlight that is hurting your eyes has been shadowed by a roof. You stare at the straight beams and slats as if they were a labyrinth you needed to navigate. It's so hot in here. Your leg feels like it's in a furnace. There's voices all around, Balin's most prominent, though you understand less than half of what he's saying. 

"Thorin, I need clean water and lots of it. Take those buckets, they're well scrubbed, make sure you go right up to the waterfall so you don't get run-off from the houses. Ginnar, run and find Dori, check on his ferments. Tell him we need all of it. Yes, every bit," Balin's hands are on either side of your head, rubbing soothing circles into your hair, and you know you're swinging in and out of consciousness. After some minutes he makes you raise your head, neck shaking, and drink from a bowl. It's warm, sweet and salty at once. "Beef bone broth and sugar, laddie, drink it all up. And here's water to wash it down. Drink as much as you can, you're dry as a twig."

Balin and Ginnar make you sit up and they take off your outer clothes, which you don't understand, but it's easier to do what they want. They cut everything away from the wound and you bite down on the inside of your cheek to keep from making a sound as the scabbed blood rips away from swollen muscles. When you open your eyes you see your brother curled up in the corner of the room, squeezed in between a chair and the wall with his knees up to his chin, staring at you, his face contracted with grief. You try to smile at him, but it probably comes out more as a grimace. There's the slam of a door and laden footsteps.

"Oh, Thorin, good - now, there in the cabinet, put a cup of those those lime salts in one of the buckets, and both of them on the fire. Dori, hello, can you get my instruments and put them on that tray in the flames? The rest of you, soap first and then wash your hands in the limewater, scrub them well - no, better than that, hurry up, I know it smells sharp. Now help me, all of you."

They help you roll onto your side again. Kili has his hands pressed to his mouth. You wonder what he's seeing to make him look so afraid. Then Balin says, "I'm afraid this is going to hurt, laddie. You alright?"

"Yeah," you croak, nodding, and then remembering that Thorin is watching. "Yes, sir."

"Good. Brave fellow."

And then Balin pulls the last of the bandages away and starts trying to clean the wound, and you can't hold back a groan. You bite down on your hand until you can feel your bones grinding beneath the skin, and someone is holding your hip and knee still though you didn't realise you were kicking. Your heart is going so fast you can't breathe, but you smell something that must be the ferment and then Balin is putting it inside the wound and you find you can still breathe enough to scream. Kili is covering his face, and part of you wants to comfort him, but your vision is black at the edges and you can think of nothing but the pain. 

A some point you can hear Balin telling you he's closing the wound with honey and bandaging it for now. The agony is starting to fade. 

"You did well," the old dwarf's voice soothes. "You did well, laddie. We'll have to go through it again in an hour, but you held very still."

You can't find words to protest, but you hear Kili give a cry and jump up. "Don't! Please, dun do it more! _Nen!_ "

He throws himself at Balin, clutching at his shirt, making the 'nen' word you know means 'stop', while Balin holds his hands away to keep from dirtying them. Kili's not hurting him but he looks plaintively at Thorin. "Get rid of the boy, Thorin, he's only going to be in the way."

Thorin's eyes darken. He grabs Kili's arm. Kili strains towards you, crying for you, and Thorin says something threatening and hauls him bodily out the door, snatching something off the bench as he goes. He kicks the door it shut behind him.

You're suddenly overtaken by the revelation that Thorin is going to kill your brother. In fact, you're sure of it. It was a knife he took off the bench. He's going to take him out into the woods and kill him like the rabbits Kili shoots who aren't dead when you catch them. You used to tell Kili, when the screaming animals were in his arms and his bottom lip was wobbling, that it was 'making them happy' to end their lives. But you don't want Thorin to make Kili happy. Your uncle thinks he's an idiot with dirty cheeks, but that is not reason to kill him, he doesn't understand, he doesn't see how precious your brother is. You can't think through the heat simmering under your skin, can't see through your swimming vision, but you know you have to stop Thorin.

You struggle to sit up, to swing your legs off the bare pallet where they've laid you. Balin and Ginnar grab you, and when you fight them, they're backed up by the other two dwarves whose names you haven't figured out yet. 

"Kili," you croak. "Don't let him hurt my brother."

"Lie down, laddie!"

"No one's going to hurt your brother."

"You're messing yourself up worse, Fili! Stay still!"

You're sure they're wrong. They didn't see the knife gleaming in Thorin's hand. They didn't see. You fall back against the pallet, unable to lift your head. You're sure you saw a knife. Didn't you? And Kili's face. And the knife. And you're so tired. And it hurts so much. And. And.

Your mind sinks away into the quiet pool of sleep. 

\---

When he tugs him away from Balin, Thorin doesn't mean to grab Kili quite so roughly as he does, but the boy wriggles so much. It's like trying to hang onto an eel. 

"Leggo," Kili says, his voice low and dangerous. "Imma stay by Fili, let me." 

Thorin can hear the warning beneath his mangled language. He is not a child anymore. They'd killed an orc, his brother said. They must have done many things to survive. For the first time Thorin wonders if Fili has lied to him at any point, if Kili really meant to miss him with that arrow, if the claims of robbing the farms for food alone were true. Surely the mayor of Bree would have warned him.

"You will make things worse for your brother if you don't stay back," Thorin warns. "Come with me."

"Nen!" Kili yells, arm twisting in Thorin's hand even though it must be hurting him to struggle so hard. " _You_ made it worse! You _sicked_ him!"

It takes Thorin half a moment to realise what Kili means, and then a white rage flashes inside him. He wrenches Kili towards the exit. "He would not be sick if you weren't living like animals," he growls, and as he nudges the door open with his foot, he sees the brown bar of soap sitting on Balin's workbench. He stuffs it in his pocket and drags Kili outside, pushing and threatening to get him to walk.

The sun is low in the sky and most of the dwarves in town are at dinner, leaving the dirt paths empty. Only Ori is outside, with both of his brothers helping Balin. He's sitting on the veranda outside their small home, swinging his legs. With wide eyes he watches Thorin harangue his nephew along the path.

Thorin jabs a finger at him. "Son, do you have a spare set of clean clothes?"

Ori jumps up. "Uh, yes, Mr Thorin, sir."

"Fetch them to Balin's hut, please."

At the edge of the village, a trail through a small beech copse leads to a clutch of slow-moving pools on a terrace below the waterfall. Thorin shoves Kili to the edge of the shoreline. "Get your clothes off."

Kili folds his arms and stands with his back to the pool, glaring at Thorin. He's already taller than most of the dwarves in town and his grim expression might be intimidating if it was anyone but Thorin, who moves right up close until they're almost nose to nose and puts on his own glare, which has been extremely effective in the past. "Get your clothes off, or you're going in with them on. I don't mind. It'll save time washing them later."

Kili holds out about seven seconds and then, with a last grunt of annoyance, claws his mismatched tunic and rag-tied sleeves over his head and off his arms, and kicks off his trousers. Then he folds his arms again and refuses to move. 

Thorin tries to put the soap in his hand and Kili lets it fall onto the pebbles. Thorin picks the dented bar up and holds it out to him. "I'm going to give you one more chance to go in there of your own volition. Do you know what means? 'Of your own volition'?" He doesn't wait for Kili's blank look. "It means before I make you."

"No," his nephew says.

Thorin puts the soap down on a tall rock nearby. He unbuttons his tunic and unlaces his boots, placing them, his socks and outer clothes in a neatly-folded pile. Then he picks up the soap, takes hold of Kili's arms with both hands and hauls him into the pool. Kili does make a commendable effort to stay dry, but Thorin has arms as thick and sinewed as willow-branches. He has wrestled goblins and boars and on one occasion, very briefly, a bear that attacked their camp on the road North of the Bruinen (though he's happy to admit he ran away as soon as he was sure the rest of his companions had scarpered out of range). Within moments the chilled water is up to his waist and he dunks Kili under once and then lets him come up, spluttering. Thorin gets a hold of him with an arm around his neck and holds him low so he can reach the top of his head. Kili kicks and flails like a fish, and Thorin has to draw back to protect his face from being raked with his nephew's fingers.

"Hold still!"

"Lemme g-go!" Kili wails. "Y-you killed Fili and now you're t-trying to d-drown me!"

Thorin sighs and lets the soap fall out of his hand. It sinks down in the churned water, trailing pale clouds, to sit on the sandy bottom of the pool. Thorin loosens his grip, gets a hold of Kili's shoulders and turns him around so he's facing him. His nephews eyes are pink-rimmed and the dirt on his face is smearing into stripes as his hair drips across his cheeks.

"Kili, I'm not trying to kill you," Thorin says. "I'm trying to clean you."

Kili coughs miserably but doesn't try to refute him. He tucks his hands under his arms and huddles with his chest just under the surface of the water. Thorin's underclothes are pretty much soaked from the splashing, but he points down into the water. "Will you pick that up. Please."

His nephew hesitates a moment and then sinks right under the water, a few bubbles trickling from his nose, and resurfaces with the soap in hand. Thorin steps back and makes him wash himself. He has to tell him to scrub under his arms, his feet, the backs of his knees and through his chest hair like instructing a toddler. Slowly, sun-browned skin emerges from beneath the dust and grass stains, skin that is freckled across Kili's cheeks and paler under his clothes. There's scars, too, old burns on his hands and arms, and the signs of scrapes and grazes and gashes that Thorin associates with mining surveyors and explorers, not with a boy who shouldn't even have left his home mountain more than a handful of times. Kili scowls constantly, but finally turns around and crouches on his heels so Thorin can take the soap to his hair.

It's like trying to clear several seasons of brambles off an old fence. Thorin has to lather the soap in again and again, and then each time he rinses it out the water still clouds brown with muck and he starts again. He can't even dig his fingers into Kili's hair without getting them stuck, and he has to pick tiny seed pods and the matted balls of spiderwebs out by hand. More than once he thinks it is a lost cause, that they will simply have to cut the whole lot off, but he tells himself each time that that is not an option. The ends can be trimmed to neatness and perhaps the most solid tangles will have to be sacrificed, but he will not force any further humiliation on his nephew by leaving him with a sheared head like a sheep, like some human criminal. 

He's already thinking of how long it will take before the other dwarves don't stare at the gauntness of the strangers, at their wild eyes and the unease in their stances. And there will be some that laugh at the way Kili talks, or the many things neither of his nephews will know, simple things like the parts of a forge bellow and how to saddle a pony. Learning will take so much time, and patience, and it can't be done unless the door is open. Unless Thorin can do as much as possible, right now, to make them feel ordinary, to make them feel less like bandits and more like dwarves. And that starts with a clean face and a good head of hair. 

"Ow!"

"Hold _still_. Tip your head back before the soap gets in your eyes."

_"OW!"_

"I warned you. It's the soap that hurts, wash it out—”

"I know what soap is!" Kili snaps back, and Thorin cannot help a chuckle.

The hair is still solid with knots by the time Thorin decides he is not going to get much more dirt out of it tonight. The sun is vanishing over the horizon and Kili is shivering, arms hugged around his body. Thorin herds him out of the pool and he stands dripping on the shore for a moment before heading for his clothes. 

"Actually, I think we should just get rid of those," Thorin says. "If you put them on you'll undo all my good work. Here, wear my tunic until we get back inside."

"I w-want my h-hood," Kili insists, clutching a stinking, worn oilskin. "F-fili begsed it for—”

He goes silent suddenly, and obligingly pulls Thorin's tunic over his head, the linen sticking to his wet skin. They make their way back up the path, Thorin wearing only his drenched underclothes with his boots and trousers under one arm, and Kili with the tunic not quite reaching his knees. There are a few more dwarves around now, visiting other houses or slipping back to the workshops to finish things up. Three women with one of their husbands pass by, heading for an evening in Bree. They hail Thorin respectfully enough and hide their laughter behind their hands. Kili hunches down, but Thorin slaps his back and stands up straighter, greeting the group as if there is nothing unusual about walking through town in your soaking wet underwear.

When they've passed on, Thorin says, "We don't have to go back to Balin's house. You must be exhausted. You can sleep in my bed, and I'll wake you as soon as there's news about your brother."

"I'm not dozey," Kili scowls. "I stay wit’ him."

"Whatever you want."

Balin and Ginnar are washing their hands when Thorin and Kili arrive, and the smell of the medicinal ferment is thick in the air. They've just finished reapplying it to Fili's leg, and Balin quickly rearranges his face from troubled to placid when Kili looks at him. The boy peels away from Thorin and crouches by the pallet in the centre of the room where Fili lies beneath three layers of furs. 

"He didn’t wake," Balin says quietly to Thorin, as Kili touches his brother's forehead and gets not even a shudder in response. Balin sighs. "His breathing is strong, though."

“Thank you,” Thorin says, and he thinks he has never meant the words more.

“Dwalin has been filling me in on the, uh, circumstances of their discovery,” Balin raises an eyebrow. “You really think it’s true? That they could be Dis’ poor boys all grown up? I know you have a good head on your shoulders, Thorin, but I wouldn’t blame you for wanting something so badly that… well.”

Thorin lets out a long breath through his nose. After a moment he shrugs. “They are lost children either way, Balin.”

“Aye, I s’pose there’s no turning them out in the cold.”

The cosy hut has become rather crowded by now. Dori and Nori are tending to the boiling water where fresh bandages are simmering, Dwalin is still slouched against one wall and Ori sits cross-legged on a chair in the corner, looking a little grey in the face after watching the proceedings. He jumps up to offer Thorin his chair, but Thorin waves him down and thanks him for the clothes he's brought. Someone has fetched a set for Thorin too, and it is a relief to peel off his wet garments and get into dry, warm wool. 

Kili gets dressed in the middle of the room without any embarrassment. Nori had brought over bread, bacon strips and apricot jam, and Thorin wolfs down two slices before he draws Kili’s attention to it. 

“You must be hungry.”

Kili shakes his head.

“You haven’t eaten since lunchtime, boy!” Dwalin bellows from across the room.

Kili replies at a rasp. “I’ll eat when he’s healthed up. When I’m sicked, Fili gives me all the food. I’nt gonna eat while he’s out.”

Thorin sighs. “There’s no shortage of food, Kili. Starving yourself won’t help your brother.”

Kili’s gaze flicks around the room at the watching faces as if he thinks this is a trap, but finally he dives on the food and eats ravenously. If what Fili said is true, it’s the first time he’s had bread since he was eight years old. The look on his face certainly attests to that, though halfway through he becomes suddenly self-conscious that he’s dripping jam on the floor and tries to wipe it up with his sleeve, making Ori wince. 

Thorin pulls the cushions and furs off Balin's bed despite the older dwarf's protests and motions for his nephew to sit in front of him. He rummages through Balin's cabinet as well. "Balin, I'm taking your comb."

"Hmm. Yes. Well, make sure you watch out for..." Balin makes a pinching motion with his fingers to indicate lice. Thorin gives him a wry smile, sits down on the cushions behind Kili and begins the insurmountable task of combing his nephew's hair. 

The dusk turns into a heavy night with moon not yet risen. The candles are lit and the watchers dwindle as first Ginnar, then Ori and Nori, and finally Dori too return to their own homes. Dwalin sits snoring on the chair that Ori had occupied, his arms folded and his chin on his chest. Balin cleans and reapplies the medicine to Fili's leg thrice more, and each time his patient sleeps right through it, pupils flicking back and forth behind his eyelids and one hand clenching and unclenching at his side. The fever makes his skin is blotchy red and in places and deathly pale in others, and his hair is oily wet with sweat. There's not peace on his face, but he's fighting.

Thorin focuses on the task at hand, working his way through the wet tangles from the bottom up and picking the knots apart strand by strand when he has to. It has been hours so far and he's still not done. Kili grunts and grizzles when he tugs too hard, but doesn't try to escape. His eyes are locked always on his sleeping brother's face, his fingers plucking and scratching at the strange clothes, which are the right length in sleeve and leg but much too big for his frame. 

By midnight Fili has still barely opened his eyes for more than a minute even when Balin, with some help from Dwalin, manages to sit him up long enough to make him drink another bowl of clean water. Thorin tries not to think about the healing tents in Moria, the warriors laid out in rows, the stench of rotting flesh and the groans of those in the throes of infection, with their blood going brown on their bandages because there wasn't enough cloth to change them. He pushes the memories aside and thinks only of Kili's hair, slowly being teased out of its wild state, succumbing to the comb bit by bit. 

Balin is clearly exhausted. He goes to sit on his bed with his hands entwined on his stomach and closes his eyes, mumbling, "Give us a song, Thorin. Keep me awake."

Something a bit cheerful is probably what he wants, but Thorin can think of only one song that feels appropriate, one that his nephews might not have forgotten. He hums the first notes of the lullaby until his throat warms with the music, and then begins to sing. 

Kili was picking at a thread coming loose from Ori's sleeve, but he suddenly goes very still. After only a few lines, he wriggles and mutters, almost to himself. "You'nt sing it like Fili."

Thorin stops. Balin cracks open one eye and says, "We need to work on your enunciation, laddie."

"Hush," Thorin says quickly, and nudges Kili with his foot. "Go on, then. Sing it the way you and Fili do."

Kili huffs and shuts his mouth, but Thorin prompts him again, and finally he opens his mouth and begins to sing. It's a strange, almost unintelligible version, the words shaped around the sounds of the original lyrics without lining up, but the tune and pacing are almost right. After the first verse, Thorin hums a harmony underneath him, which seems to trip Kili up for a moment, but soon he goes on. He has four extra verses of his own – or perhaps Fili's – invention, which are scattered through with words Thorin doesn't recognise and tell strange stories about the forest. Thorin would call it nonsense, but how does he know? Perhaps they make perfect sense to the two brothers. And underneath the strangeness, Thorin can almost feel the weight of twelve years, the weight of isolation so complete that maybe it can never be driven out again, of a child who still talks like a child but is grown tall, learned the world too well, and proven his courage in attacking a dwarf twice his weight and twice as well armed to protect his brother. 

When Kili falls silent, there's a grunt from the corner. Dwalin has his head up and has been listening. He nods to Thorin. "Alright, then. I believe you."

"You didn't believe me?" Thorin raises an eyebrow.

"I trusted you. Didn't believe _them_ ," Dwalin replies, closes his eyes and goes back to sleep. 

The fire crackles in the hearth, light flickering in bars between the boiled bandages that Balin has hung up to dry in front of the flames. Thorin finds that he can draw the comb through Kili's hair from scalp to tip. He pauses, holding a thick handful in his palm, and then tells Kili to stay right where he is. 

He goes out into the cold night and returns from his own house soon enough with a leather satchel the size of his hand, buckled closed with brightly coloured straps. Setting the satchel aside for a moment, he braids Kili's long fringe and sides away from his face and down the back of his head, pulling in strands to thicken the plait, through which he clips on a handful of metal beads. When he runs out of hair he pins it shut with a final, toothed fastening. 

"What's it?" Kili asks, touching the back of his head. "You stuck bits in."

"It's just a few beads from your mother," Thorin explains, pushing the satchel along the floor to rest beside Kili's hand. 

"Oh," says Kili. He yawns widely. "Hmm."

And that is the last Thorin gets out of him before he falls asleep on the floor. 

Balin heaves himself up to check his patient once more and smiles down at Thorin, sitting with his back against the wall and the wild dwarf youth sleeping soundly at this feet. Thorin smiles back and while Balin is busy reapplying the medicine, he picks up one of the furs to drape over Kili’s shoulders. As he unfolds it, he dislodges something that his nephew had been sitting on. 

It is the leather hood that Kili had insisted on keeping of all his filthy clothes. Thorin stares at the horrible thing for a long moment, sure his eyes are deceiving him. But when he touches it he knows what it is for certain. Before Balin can see it, he folds it up and tucks it into his coat, making sure it is completely hidden from view.


	7. the light of day

You awake inside a warm cave, with the smell of a dying fire and strange animals. But no, it isn’t a cave, it’s a house made of wood, and the animals are other dwarves. 

You try to raise your hand, and it feels like it’s tied down to a landslide of rocks. You focus as hard as you can, feeling sweat break out on your brow. Even breathing takes all the energy you’ve got in your veins, but you fill your lungs and push the air out again and as you do so your arm lifts up and you can finally rub the sleep and sweat-salt out of your eyes. 

After taking a while to recover from the arm-lifting, you grip the sides of the slat-bed you’re lying on and roll onto your side, swinging your feet around to the floor. Your whole leg between your knee and your spine burns, and when you put your hand against the back of your thigh you can feel scratchy bits of what you realise is thread. You’ve been sewn up like a torn shirt. How did you manage to sleep through that? How long _have_ you been sleeping? You remember being too hot, and you remember pain, and a strange dwarf's soothing voice talking you through it, and fear - you remember fear. Kili - you were afraid for Kili, you wanted him near so you could look after him - but in the sober light after the fever, it occurs to you that if they didn't kill you, it's not likely they've hurt him. 

You take a couple more minutes of deep breaths until your head stops spinning. Your bladder is trying to get your attention, but it’s not like you can just wander away from the camp and take a piss in the bushes. You don’t know how this town works. Even the light through the glass windows looks strange. There’s no birds calls, no wind. Also, you have no clothes on.

Someone’s kindly left you a set on a chair by your bed. You stand up very slowly, waiting for your vision to rush into blackness and ready to aim for the bed if you do, but with some patience you manage to keep yourself upright. You can’t put any weight on the leg without red bursts of pain jarring your brain, so you balance shakily on the good one. It’s not until you’re pulling the shirt over your head – clean, soft linen, smelling of a perfume you realise must be what clothes smell like when they’re not caked in dirt – that you notice you’re not alone. There’s an old dwarf sleeping on his back in a larger bed in the corner of the one-roomed hut. Even unconscious, his hands are folded neatly on his chest and his white beard is smoothly arranged. He almost doesn’t look real. You stare at him for a while, as if you had stumbled across some ancient monument in the thick foliage, and then he snores and the spell is broken. You remember his name: Balin. Your parents were his friends, in that long-ago time before the goblin raid. 

You shake your head and ease on the trousers, though you have to bite your lip as your pull the cloth over your swollen leg. Just as you’re tying the belt – the complicated buckle is rather too much to think about right now – you hear a familiar voice from outside.

You hop to the door, grasping helplessly at the catch for a few seconds until you figure out that it lifts up, and pull it open to find your brother just walking up the steps on the other side, with another young dwarf right behind him.

He's not just unhurt. You almost don’t recognise him. He’s… clean. And his hair has _braids_.

“Fili!” he throws his arms open, face breaking in a wide, familiar smile. You grin back, and he bounces up the next two steps and wraps his arms around your waist, heaving you up and spinning you round, his laughter shaking through your bones. When he puts you down you land on the bad leg and give a yelp.

“Sorry! Sorry!” he’s still smiling, and doesn’t sound that sorry. You sit down quickly on the step before your dizziness knocks you down and Kili crouches on the step beside you, grabbing your head and kissing the top of it before you can tell him to stop bouncing so damn much. The world sorts of _swoops_ every time you move.

“Thought you were proper conked, brother!” he keeps one hand on your shoulder and you grab it and squeeze it quickly, and tug one of the bead plaits hanging behind his ear.

"Did you manage this yourself?" you ask, your voice no more than a rasp. It’s strange, seeing him look like… well, like a dwarf. You don’t feel like a dwarf. You feel like you’ve just been mistaken for one, and will be found out soon.

"Nuh-uh. Thorin," he replies, and suddenly it feels like your brain just swung right round inside your skull. Uncle Thorin? Gruff, scowling, raging Uncle Thorin? The one who stabbed you and dragged Kili out of the hut when you were dying of fever? Uncle Thorin tidied and braided your little brother's hair? It almost makes you _more_ afraid of him, that you could have so misjudged his capabilities.

“What’s ‘conked’?” the other dwarf asks, breaking you out of your thoughts. You’d forgotten him for a moment. He’s about your height, though his beard’s only just coming in, and he’s got a cuddly look about him. He raises his hand nervously to you. “Hello. I’m Ori. I’m the – I _was_ the youngest dwarf in town.”

“Ori’s ruddy following me all over, I dunno why,” Kili laughs. The dwarf’s brow crinkles and you glance up at your brother.

“Kili, now that we’re around others you can’t just say everything you’re thinking,” you tell him.

“Oh,” his face falls and he glances at his new friend. “Sorry.”

You shake Ori’s hand, which seems to restore the mood a bit. “I’m Fili. And it means ‘dead’.”

“Pardon?” Ori frowns.

“Conked. He means he thought I was dead.”

(And you don't doubt that you were; you can feel it like a scar behind your eyes, that sometime last night you slipped to the very edge of the living world and brushed something there, a hungry void waiting for all mortals, and barely clawed your way back. If it hadn’t been for Balin… you don’t like to think.) 

“I see,” Ori nods, his gaze locked back on Kili’s face. You can see the instant adoration there and you start to feel a little less afraid for your brother’s future. “Kili, someone at breakfast this morning was saying that you, uh, that you two survived because you were, uh, rescued by _wolves_.”

Kili laughs, but not unkindly. “Yeah, yeah. The largest missus wolf, she’re our Ma, we drunk from her teats. And hunted on four legs.”

“Oh, gosh,” Ori puts a hand over his mouth, and Kili almost falls over backwards laughing, clutching your shoulder for support.

“That isn’t true, Ori. I think he’s rather excited about having people to talk to,” you shake your head at Ori. 

“Oh. Well, yes, I can imagine,” Ori’s cheeks go a little pink and he wrings his hands. “Did you want to see the waterwheel now, Kili? I can show you how it works.”

You look up at Kili, who by the startled look on his face has suddenly been struck by his very first social dilemma. You give his hand another squeeze. “I’m alright. You go look around. And think about what you say before you say it.”

“I will!” Kili gripes. 

Almost as soon as he’s scampered off, harrying Ori’s steady pace, Balin appears in the doorway behind you, grumbling about being woken up. 

“I suppose you must be feeling better, then?” he asks, raising one bushy eyebrow as he glances at your leg. When you nod, he clicks his tongue. “Don’t you dare go running about. I’d hate for you to pull your stitches out, but I’d hate even more if I had to put them all back in.”

Without needing to be asked, he shows you to a pot in the corner, saying there’s no point in your going all the way to the latrines at the edge of town. Afterwards he makes you wash your hands in hot water, all the way to the elbows, and then gives you a cloth for your face as well. You feel like the skin on your cheeks is about to rub off by the time he’s satisfied. He hands you a comb but you get it stuck in your hair almost immediately. Once he’s untangled it with some difficulty, he settles for tying your hair back into a loose bun at the base of your skull. You don’t see the point of it all – it’s not like you need all this soap and tidiness to recognise people – but you figure it’s just a game you don’t know the rules for yet, and you’d better learn quickly. It must be important to Thorin if he spent all that time on Kili, and Thorin is important to you. To your survival, you correct yourself quickly. 

“That’ll have to do for now,” he sighs, standing back to look at you. “Feel like you can manage going outside again? I’m going to see if someone can bring us a bite to eat.”

You nod again, and Balin gets an arm around your waist to help you hop outside and sit at the bottom of the steps. He disappears down the path between the nearest two huts, and you sit back against the post of the house, enjoying the raw feeling of the sun on your scrubbed face. When you open your eyes next you find there’s three dwarves staring at you from a few feet away. You flinch and fold your arms, not sure how to greet them.

“Good afternoon, my boy. Gloin, at your service,” the one at the front bows low with his arms spread, his umber beard almost touching the ground. “And this is my wife Fagrliga, and her sister Bein,” he gestures to the two women beside him, who each bow too, though not as low and with only one arm extended. You have the vaguest memory of learning the difference as a boy. Fagrliga’s beard is even longer than her husband’s. 

“Hello,” you wheeze, and clear your throat to repeat yourself. You grip the steps and try to sit up straighter, but Gloin waves you down.

“No, no, don’t get up!” Gloin steps a little closer to you. “We don’t mean to bother you.”

His wife adds, “We’re glad to see you out of bed. Though I don’t know if it is good to be out in the sun after a dreadful trauma, you know. It’s the cool and dark that you need, but there’s nowhere round here to stay cool. Even the caves are too hot, being as they’re all for working in. I do apologise that there aren’t better lodgings.”

“Thank you?” you reply. You’re not sure where this conversation is going, or why someone would want to talk to you about things that aren’t present, or what ‘trauma’ means, though you assume it’s measurely equal to ‘being stabbed in the leg by your long-lost uncle’. 

Gloin nods his agreement. “I’m sure you know by now that the whole town is talking about you and your brother. We were just passing by, and we thought we’d see what the truth was. I mean, it’s remarkable! Living in the forest all the years. Amazing!”

All three of them have crept in close and are staring at you. You realise they must expect some kind of answer. You blink and say, “Yes.” 

The dwarves lean in close, glancing at each other. It’s Bein who finally prompts. “But you must have stories.”

You really are lost now. You glance sideways at the path where Balin disappeared and then back at the eager faces. “I, uh, used to tell my brother that if he went near the river in a storm the river dragons would drown him.”

Gloin gives a gruff bark that you’re pretty sure is a laugh. “No, boy, I mean your own stories. About how you made it all these years. About what happened!”

At last, you begin to see what it is they want from you. Perhaps it’s not so different from what Kili used to demand on summer evenings when it was too warm to sleep, or on long journeys over flat plains that stretched for miles. The difference was that Kili already knew all your stories, so you had to make up new ones for him. But perhaps when people meet each other, they prefer the true stories. It sort of makes sense.

“Well,” you scratch the back of your hand and chew your lip. “The reason I wanted him to stay away from the river is because of floods. We lived and travelled by rivers very often, you see. But when the rain came across from the East and hit the mountains, I think it gets sort of stuck, and there all the water gathers in the peaks in trickles and creeks, growing more and more, until suddenly at the foot of the hills where we lived the rivers would suddenly rise and could trap you if you weren’t watching…”

Before you’ve finished, Balin returns with three younger dwarves, one of them carrying a long bench over each should with his bare arms bulging so huge you are sure it can’t be healthy. Another of them has a low table and the third carries two baskets of food, while Balin is lugging large crockery bottles under each arm. The three new dwarves have barely put down their burdens when they ask to hear the story as well, from the beginning. Gloin, Fagrliga and Bein tell you to start again while they get more food for lunch, so you go back to the beginning while the younger dwarves drop down along the bench and lean forward, listening intently. Balin rolls his eyes and begins setting out the food.

When Gloin and his family return, they’ve got four more dwarves – two more women and their husbands – and all of them are carrying food or round stools for the table. So then you have to start the whole story again, and you find yourself fleshing out the intricacies and adding new details as you remember them. Balin helps you perch on the bench without hurting your leg, and people are laying out plates and pushing knives and forks into your hands and serving you cold slices of meat and baked vegetables and pouring you something pink and clear out of the bottles. It tastes sharp and rancid as bad fruit, but Balin says it’s just dilute wine, and is good for the heart, so you try to drink it in between finishing the story – and then starting another one when the questions keep coming.

There’s too many people to look at all at once, and it’s giving you a headache trying to glance between them. The sun and the food and the talking all starts to make you feel dizzy and sleepy, and you can’t manage even a quarter of the food on your plate even though your stomach is rumbling. There’s more to eat on the table then you and Kili would have in a whole summer, you’re sure. Your instinct is to shove the food into your pockets and hoard it somewhere the animals won’t get it, but you know somehow that’s not polite, and you feel sort of miserable and jealous that you are being gifted such a feast without asking for it, and that you have no way to repay the dwarves around you.

“You feeling sleepy, laddie?” Balin elbows you gently, and you nod. He waves down Fagrliga's latest questions. For the next while you just sit quietly and listen to the dwarves, who seem perfectly capable of filling up the conversation without you. You learn all their names, and forget some of them at once, and hear about letters from their kin in Ered Luin. Gloin and Fagrliga’s young son is there, living with his mother’s parents.

You can’t help frowning at this. Did something terrible happen to keep him there? You turn to Gloin, “Why isn’t he here? In the town?”

“Safer in the mountains, don’t you know!” Gloin says, almost sounding proud to explain this to you. “There are always too many willing parents and not enough children amoung dwarves, my boy, so of course the young ones should stay where they’re best protected. It would be simply irresponsible for us to take Gimli on such a long journey without knowing what dangers we’d face along the way, and his grandparents will educate him well until we return. I remember even Dori – if you’ve met him? – caught quite a lot of flak bringing his youngest brother, because everyone thought it was a bad idea at Ori’s age.”

He nods and turns to say something to his sister-in-law, saving you from having to answer. Your stomach is suddenly heavy and heaving. Irresponsible? You haven’t missed any meaning in his words. You and Kili spent your childhood on the road with Ma and Thorin. You left the mountains when Kili was still at Ma’s breast. What kind of mother does that make her?

Was the goblin raid so unexpected? Should she have left you both in the mountains? If she had, how different things would have been... 

You’re mulling on it when the whole table goes quiet at the sound of hoofsteps. They’re heavier than a pony’s, and when you turn your head your eyes widen at the sight of a huge, fur-draped man on a horse that at least twice as tall as you, tossing its head with the sun shining through its mane. There’s two more humans on horses close behind, and you recognise one of them. He’s the man who was in the forest when the dwarves caught you and Kili. He helped them find you, if you understood their conversation right. You can’t believe that was only two days ago; you feel like whole ages of history have passed.

Balin clicks his finger at one of the younger dwarves. “Undir, run and find Thorin. Be quick about it.”

As the youth sprints off, Balin stands up and goes to greet the man on the horse. You shrink down where you sit, hoping you will be invisible behind Gloin and his huge shoulders. You don’t know why the man is here, but the silence at the table tells you it’s not good, and anything that’s not good right now seems to be about you and Kili.

You can see only welcome and cheer in Balin’s pose as he speaks, craning his neck back to look up at the human, but the man scowls in return.

“I want to know what has happened to the criminals you arrested,” the man barks, loud enough that everyone at the table can hear. A couple of the dwarves glance at you, and you shrink even lower, knotting your hands in your lap. Your instinct is to bolt and lose yourself in the nearest cluster of trees, but even if that wasn’t the fastest way to draw attention to yourself, you don’t think you’d make it far on your leg.

Balin’s voice is soothing as he asks what the man wants to know about them. The man sweeps his gaze across the table of feasting dwarves, and the few others who have appeared at the ends of the nearby paths to see what’s going on. Finally he says vaguely, “Well obviously, Mr Balin, I have many townfolk to keep safe. It’s my responsibility as mayor.”

Everything’s gone so quiet you can hear Balin’s reply this time. “Of course, of course, my friend. And I can assure you, they are safe now. Oh, here’s Thorin.”

All eyes turn towards the path that leads to the forges. Thorin is striding along in a leather apron, sleeves rolled past his elbows. The dwarves on the path step back to let him through. He pulls off his smithy’s gloves and hands them and the apron to Balin without looking at the older dwarf. Despite his working clothes and the soot on his brow, you can feel the focus of everyone watching is now on him. The mayor might as well have shrunk into the distance.

“Good afternoon, sir,” Thorin rumbles, his hands on his hips. “Will you get off your horse so we may speak a little easier?”

The mayor’s face sours, but he dismounts immeadiately and stands over Thorin with the reins in one hand. “I have questions, Thorin Oakenshield,” he says stiffly. “You swore to me the bandits who robbed my folk were no kin of yours, and now my tracker tells me they are your own nephews.”

“It’s true, but I didn't know it when we last spoke,” Thorin says. “And they will be treated according to their crimes, as any other dwarf would. We agreed on this when I said I would hunt your bandits – that justice would be done by our laws.”

The mayor holds Thorin’s gaze, drawing his shoulders up beneath their thick furs. “And what will be done? To ensure they harass my people no more?”

There’s a pause. You notice that Gloin’s fist is closed very tight around the handle of his knife. Your heart is racing; you didn’t think of your thefts as crimes. You didn’t think that you might have hurt anyone.

Thorin answers at last, with a note of reluctance in his voice, but you can’t tell whether it’s because he wants to hide the truth or punish you worse. “They are still children, and are not considered fully responsible among dwarves. Furthermore, I believe they acted from desperation, not malice. Their punishment would the be discipline and teaching as of a parent to a child. This is our way, sir, and I ask you to respect it.”

The mayor draws back a little, his face crumpling into hard lines. “This is not justice! What of my people? Must I go back to them and tell them these robbers walk free?”

“There will be no more thefts,” Thorin folded his arms. “I will see to that personally. And I will repay all that was stolen, if you will supply an inventory to me, with testimony signed by each of the victims.”

The mayor shakes his head. He grips the saddle of his horse, saying only, “This matter is not laid to rest, dwarf.”

With that, he swings himself up onto his steed and tugs the reins around, forcing Thorin to step back or risk being kicked by the horse’s hooves. As the other two humans follow the mayor’s lead, the tracker glances across the table of dwarves, and the thing you fear most comes to pass; he looks at your face and his eyes widen. As the three men leave, the tracker trots up close to the mayor and says something too low for anyone to hear. Within moments they are gone, but you know you’re not getting away that easily.

You’re beginning to feel as if you’ve been running under a hot sun all day. Your leg aches and your head is spinning. But you straighten your back and try to focus your eyes. Your uncle is approaching you at an alarming speed, and before you can brace yourself he’s got a heavy hand on your shoulder and is hissing in your ear. “Come with me. Now.”

You struggle to get out from between the bench and the table without stretching your stitched wound, and Thorin waits without any sign of impatience. He walks at your pace but offers no assistance as you limp slowly along behind him.

At least it is cooler inside the house. Thorin's lodgings are sparser than Balin's, and with none of the lovingly collected furs and embroidered cushions, nor the array of candles or the cabinets full of medicinal supplies. It does not look as if Thorin spends much time here at all. You settle yourself on the only furniture, a long bench by the door, your leg throbbing. Your uncle banks up the fire, rolls his sleeves down and, oddly, checks each of the windows. Finally he simply stands with his hands on his hips.

"I need to ask you something," he says.

You shrug. You feel like you've come to a battle unprepared, with no idea which army you're supposed to be fighting for. Thorin shifts his weight and says, "If Kili says that he 'begsed' something, what does he mean?"

That's not where you thought the attack would come from at all, and you're too set on an argument to figure out how to answer at first. You frown, rubbing the knee of your bad leg to ease the inflammation.

"Does he mean he stole it?" Thorin presses.

You shake your head. "No, it means swapped - or, or traded, rather." 

Thorin's features contract and he strides to the window and looks out at the sunshine as if it had personally wronged him. You have no idea what is going on, but you decide not to say so. You don't feel that showing your ignorance will do you any more good. 

Finally Thorin turns towards you again. "You _must_ tell me the truth, Fili. All of it. I believe you are my sister's sons, I truly do - but I cannot help you if you keep secrets from me."

"I have no idea what you're saying!" you reply, your hands gripping the bench. You feel as if you're still ten years old all over again. "I haven't lied!"

Thorin looks at you for a long time, and you hold his gaze. Suddenly he goes over to the corner of the room, flicking back the rug and lifting a ring set into the floorboards. He twists it until something beneath the wood clicks and lifts up a trapdoor into the crawlspace beneath. He reaches inside and when he straightens up he's holding a dark, folded wad of cloth. 

"Do you know what this is?" Thorin asks.

"It's Kili's hood," you answer cautiously. 

"Do you know what it's _made_ of?"

You feel as if the fever is returning, rising in your blood, digging black fingers into your vision. You answer, "Horse leather."

"No, Fili," Thorin says heavily. "It's orc skin. Did those foul creatures tell you that when they gave it to you?"

You shake your head. Your skin is going numb. You didn't escape the void last night. You brought it back with you, and it's waiting, you can smell it just over the horizon. 

"It's not a trophy. They make orc-leather from the bodies of traitors and deserters, and pass it down to the lowest members of the troop, to remind them what will happen if they step out of line. It's literally a symbol of subservience to the orc captains, and you gave it to your brother," Thorin's face softens a little. "You really didn't know any of this, did you?"

"I swear," you whisper, pulling your good leg up onto the bench to rest your chin against it.

"Tell me how you came by it. And the bow and arrows, you got them the same way, didn't you?"

"It was just for one summer, a couple of years ago," you mumble against your knee. "I befriended the orcs for a little while, up in the northern mountains. I know it was a mistake, and we never went back there. But I just talked to them and traded. That was all."

Thorin pinches the bridge of his nose and comes to sit down next to you. "Is this the truth this time?"

"Yes! Thorin, you must believe me!"

"Alright," Thorin nods, and shakes his head. "Yes, I do belive you," he looks at the well-worn leather in his hand. You feel nauseous all of a sudden, knowing what it really is. Thorin holds it up. "I am going to burn this, with all the clothes that you and Kili were wearing. You must tell no one, do you understand? Make your brother promise, too. No one must ever know."

You nod. Your throat's locked up. You can't quite understand what it is you've done, but you feel guilty, sickeningly ashamed. One moment you think you’re going to be punished for banditry, next you’re being accused of fraternising with orcs. You don’t know what can go wrong next.


	8. it takes a village

The mayor’s hostility is the fear of the whole town. Yes, all the men from the North Downs to the Hoarwell River have become fond of having dwarf smithies so close and dwarf caravans bringing new tools and trinkets through the villages four times a year, but hatred feeds the soul even better than good steel. If Bree decides that the dwarves are protecting thieves, they may take their business away, and word will spread. It may all blow over soon – or it may cripple the connections Thorin has fought to build during the past year.

All this you learn from Balin, though he has to explain a lot of it to you slowly. He's patient enough that you don't feel stupid for asking, and you'd probably keep asking for the rest of the day if he didn't insist you spend the afternoon in bed. He gives you a pulped moss to chew that deadens the pain a little, and you sleep until after sunset. When you wake you find Kili sitting nearby, sharpening a stick of firewood all over Balin’s floor. He’s taken the braids out of his hair and let it hang tousled around his face. He looks more like your brother that way, tough and adaptive no matter the season.

Before you can say something, there’s a knock on the door and Kili looks up sharply, raising his knife. It’s Dwalin, who eyes his small blade skeptically and says, “It’s time.”

Kili sees that you’re awake and hurries over to help you sit up. “They be meeting,” he hisses. “’bout us. Big going on.”

"Thorin wants everything you've told us out in the open, for the whole town to hear," Dwalin explains. "He may ask you to speak. You think you're well enough?"

You nod. The sleep is already draining away and after the interest that the dwarves at lunch showed, you're eager to prove yourself to the rest. Maybe you needn't have been afraid of them after all. Dwalin shrugs, "Think about what you're going to say. We're not all as soft-hearted as our leader."

You honestly can't tell if that's a joke or not. Dwalin holds the door open for you to limp over, leaning heavily on Kili. He grunts, “You want me to carry you, lad?”

“I’ll be alright,” you reply.

The meeting is in a huge stone house on the highest terrace below the cliff, with a doorway large enough for a man to walk through without crouching. Inside is a single, long room in which benches have been laid out for the entire town to sit. Thorin stands against the middle of the back wall, at the epicentre of the crowd. He’s wearing a formal tunic and steel-plated vest, and speaking to a grey-haired dwarf with one hand cupped around his ear. Most of the benches are already filled, and a few latecomers shuffle in behind you and make their way towards the spaces on the ends. Dwalin, however, herds you and Kili up the aisle between the rows until you are standing at the front with your uncle.

“Thank you, Oin, I will think on that,” Thorin says, and the old dwarf nods and heads to the front row to sit with a silver-braided woman who must be his wife.

Thorin leans in towards you and and your brother. "Did Dwalin tell you my intentions?" he asks. "Are you willing to speak about everything you've said to me?"

"Yes, sir," you say. Thorin opens his mouth as if to correct you, then waves to tell you both stand against the wall. You can’t help but feel trapped there, with only a few high windows above, and the feeling only gets worse when you turn around and find the whole town watching you, whispering to their neighbours. Kili immediately drops down to sit cross-legged on the floor, and after a moment you lower yourself beside him. Your eyeline is lower then everyone else now, but it feels safer.

Thorin looks at you both and then back over his folk, and without any instruction the whole hall goes suddenly quiet. He nods at them and begins to speak. He thanks them for joining him, and lays out his appreciation that they chose to live here on open land like humans for a gamble he didn't know would pay off. He says he wants to know their thoughts about all matters that affect the town, and finally looks at you and Kili, gesturing towards you with an open palm, and tells the whole story, right from when your mother and Dwalin first survived the goblin raid, the original search for his nephews - which is new information even to you - and then the mayor's original request, the discovery of you in the forest, and everything that's happened since. He doesn't go into detail about why he believes your story, saying only that he is very sure. 

"However, I accept that my mind may be clouded by the lingering grief for my family," he says heavily. "That is why I want all of you to make up your own minds. Many of you knew my sister well, and some of you will even remember my nephews. I want you to listen to the story these young ones have for you, and give them a chance to prove themselves."

He looks at you and suddenly your whole body goes rigid. You wish it was Kili in your place. He's already befriended Ori with his talkativeness. You can't convince these people of anything. You're still sick. You don't know what to say. But you look at Kili and he's looking at you, waiting for you, and you know the way he talks isn't easy for the dwarves to understand. You get to your feet and clear your throat.

Your voice is a whisper at first, but you take a breath and repeat yourself. "It's true. Our mother was Dis and our father was Vili, son of Vit. We have lived in the forest since we ran away from the goblins. We ate wild plants and caught animals. We slept in caves or built shelters from branches. We stole from humans when we were starving. We don't want to be a burden to you. All of this is true. Yes."

You freeze up, unsure of how to go on, one arm picking at the stiff cloth of your borrowed tunic. Thorin looks at you, his gaze pushing for more, but you can't think of what else to say. Some of the dwarves are frowning, or leaning over to mutter to their friends. You can see Ori at the back straining his neck to see you, but he's the only one attempting a smile. You hang your head, afraid to meet all those eyes. 

There's footsteps from near the front and you look up to see Oin's wife striding towards you, gold chains tinkling inside her beard. She's cleaning something on her skirt, which she soon presses to her eye; a little circle of glass edged in silver, through which she peers at you as she looms in. 

"Your father was Vili, boy?" she asks. Her voice is like gravel at the bottom of a rushing river. "Do you remember when he went to the wars in Moria?"

"Not really," you mumble. You know he came and went several times, and wasn't there when Kili was born. 

"Do you remember the day he didn't come back?" 

It seems like a strange question, and you feel a twinge of fear in your gut, but then you find you can answer. "Yes, ma'am."

_(You were - seven? Almost eight? - and camped in a valley full of waterfalls. The watchman saw the warriors in the distance. After more than a year away, they were coming to join the surveyors led by your mother. You didn't know it yet - it was just a rumour from the ravens - but the wars were over. Those who came back were back for good. You cared only that Pa was coming home, that he would be meeting Kili for only the second time, that he had made you promise to raise your little brother up well until he returned, and you couldn't wait to tell him everything that had happened since he'd left. You grabbed Kili's hand and went along the cliffside path that passed above the road. You waited there, while Kili ripped up handfuls of grass and daises and played some baby game, dyeing his hands green. The warriors came around the corner on their ponies, with their banners hanging from their saddles. Uncle Thorin rode at their head. The sun was shining as if to celebrate their triumph.)_

_(But there were so few, and Pa was not among them. Uncle Thorin looked up and saw you. He raised his hand, and you called out to him, "Where's Papa?" and he only shook his head. You didn't fully comprehend death, but you knew what it meant in relation to yourself; that your father would never come home, that he would never tell you he was proud of you, that he would never hear Kili speak. You picked up your little brother and ran all the way back to the camps, angry at Uncle Thorin, angry at the warriors, even angry at Pa for deserting you. You found Ma ordering people about, setting up new tents and preparing food for the arrival of the veterans. She scolded you for letting Kili get so covered in grass stains. You told her what happened. She didn't say anything. She walked away. You don't know where she went, but when she came back to greet Thorin, her cheeks were dry.)_

You tell Oin’s wife a little of the story, just the outline. The old woman doesn't look at Thorin for confirmation. She simply continues to stare until you finish speaking. At last she straightens up, nodding to herself and tucking the eye-glass into her pocket. She claps her thick hand on your shoulder. Her voice booms low around the room.

"As you know, I am Viss, daughter of Buri, and I served Thror's wife before the fall of Erebor. I knew Thorin, Dis and their brother Frerin from when they were roly-poly children on the nursery floor."

You hear Kili give a snort and look over to see a small flush in Thorin's cheek. Viss continues without a pause.

"This boy is of his mother's and grandfather's line. I vouch for him."

With that she gives a last glance around the hall as if to quell any doubt and then stomps back to her seat. For a moment there is only mutters, and – maybe – a few more smiles. Then a voice rises up.

“Yes, but how did they survive?” everyone twists in their seat to look around at where Ginnar is standing at one side, twisting his hat between his hands. He looks a little flushed, but his eyes are flinty.

Thorin shifts where he stands. “Just as they said. They learned to live off the land.”

“You know that isn’t true!” Ginnar cries, high and with a frightened note of apology. “Tell us, Thorin!”

Thorin looks sharply at you, and you shake your head. You didn’t say anything to anyone. Your uncle turns back to Ginnar. “This is all I know, Ginnar,” he insists.

Everyone in the hall is looking at Ginnar, and he licks his bottom lip, looking as if he’s about to tear his hat right in half. “I found it in your fireplace,” he stammers. “A piece of orc-leather. Why would you hide it?”

Thorin’s face grows dark. “What is this? You were spying on me in my home?”

“No! Thorin, I didn’t mean to pry,” Ginnar’s voice is getting faster and louder above the rumbles from the others. There are some frowns in his direction, and others turn towards you and Thorin. Ginnar continues. “I smelled a foul smell as I was passing by, and I was afraid a spark from your hearth had set the furnishings alight, so I ran inside and it was there, smouldering on the embers. Orc leather, by my beard, I would know it anywhere. And they – they had orc weapons too, a bow, and an axe I saw at their camp!” he throws out a finger towards you. You find yourself backing up a step, to stand in front of Kili.

Thorin interrupts. “Fili has promised me these were mere trinkets they took from the orcs, in their need—”

“Don’t you see?” Ginnar pleads. “They must have been taken in by the goblins who raided our folk, or by others soon after – they were raised and bred by those creatures – that’s how they survived, Thorin!”

You find your breath coming hard and fast into your lungs. You want to shout that it’s lies, but the glares in your direction are growing more and more numerous. Thorin counters, “Does that make them orcs themselves? Their character is good!”

But now an old dwarf you don’t recognise is on his feet. “Thorin, they are your heirs! They have a claim to _kingship!_ We cannot have kings who are bred by _orcs!_ ”

There is a babble of assent and Balin gets to his feet at the front, “Now, let them speak, we still don’t know—”

But a young dwarf cuts him off. “But of course we do! You could see it the moment they arrived!”

“They looked like goblins themselves!” someone agrees.

You’ve backed right up to the wall, and as the voices get louder, Kili grabs your hand and jumps up. "We'nt lying! We never!"

But Ginnar replies in a panicked yell, "He said they're lying! He admitted it!"

"No! Tha's not what I said!" Kili snaps back. "We'nt friends of orcs!"

Hornbor is standing beside Ginnar, pointing at Thorin. "The humans said an orc was seen in Midgewater last night. It's no coincidence. They’ll bring ruin on us all."

The whole hall is arguing now, brothers and neighbours, husbands with wives. They look like gulls fighting over a carcass. You have to get out of here before they turn on you. You’re trying to see a way out through the crowds, but as soon as you sprint for the aisle you would be set upon, you’re sure of it. You know now what it is to be the bird in the snare, lulled by sweet water in the hollow of a tree until too late you feel the noose tighten around your neck. But you’re no fragile bird; you’re willing to fight anyone that gets between you and your brother’s escape, even if you have to stay in the noose to ensure it.

You knew it all along. You’re not dwarves anymore, either of you, you’re something else and they will never accept you back.

Thorin is bellowing for calm, and Dwalin is on his feet too and saying roughly the same thing in rather a less polite way, but no one is listening. And Thorin finally steps forward and if you thought he was shouting before, well, you didn’t know what shouting was. “What would you have me do?” he roars, and as the squabbling fades away he repeats it, so loud it echoes around the stone walls. “What would you have me do?”

One of the old dwarves in the front row lowers a long pipe and croaks. “Whatever the truth, they make the men of Bree restless. Send them to the Blue Mountains, Thorin. Perhaps there they can learn to speak and behave properly,” he tilts his head, waving the pipe, “if not like princes.”

You feel your cheeks burn, and Kili surges forward with a snarl, but you thrust your arm out to catch him and hold him back. Thorin shakes his head. “No. I will not do that.” 

One of the women calls, “I think it would be best, Thorin.”

“This town is no place for vulnerable youths,” her neighbour agrees.

“Good stone and less sun, that’ll fix ‘em,” the old dwarf with the pipe adds.

You wince as Kili blurts out, “We dun need y’protection! And we ain’t living ‘neath ground akin rabbits!”

There’s an angry rumble and the shaking of heads. You smack Kili’s arm. “Shut it.”

Thorin’s shoulders slump, but the dwarves quieten to hear him speak again. “Listen to me as a friend, not as your leader. I will not send my only kin away after finding them so soon. They are my responsibility, and I owe that much to their mother. That is my decision. I gathered you here so you could understand it, not sway it.”

There’s some murmuring, but no one stands up again. Thorin deftly turns the conversation towards matters of accounts and surpluses, and the threat fades and vanishes. You no longer see a hall of hungry predators. 

By the time the meeting ends, the discussion has moved to other town issues and you and Kili have been left out for now. Kili has gone back to sitting and glaring at any dwarf who looks at him, and you’ve had a chance to dwell on your thoughts. When the meeting is finally disbanded, you jump up and grab Thorin’s elbow.

“Sir, can I ask—”

He shrugs you off. “Go back with Balin, Fili. Get some sleep.”

“Sir,” you insist, and when he still turns away you change tact. “Uncle.”

He looks at you sharply. You swallow. “Where is Midgewater? Can you show me, on a map?”

Thorin frowns at you. “You’re thinking of what Hornbor said? About an orc in Midgewater? There hasn’t been a raid in these parts for three generations, Fili.”

“Please,” you clutch hard to his arm. “Why would they be this far from the mountains?”

“It’s probably nothing. The humans are on edge, and the marsh is full of shadows—”

You snap, “I won’t let this go until you show me a map.”

He looks ready to rebuke you for your tone, but many of the dwarves are lingering to talk to each other, and a few are watching curiously. Rolling his eyes, Thorin takes you to the end of the meeting hall, where there are a number of tall cabinets of fine-carved wood. Thorin doesn’t bother unlocking them, but pulls over a bench so he can reach up on top of the central cabinet. He brings down a roll of yellowed paper, unties it and lays the top few sheets out on the bench. One is a builder’s plan for the village, another a survey of the bedrock, a third you guess is a roadmap of Bree and the route to the dwarf town.

You run your fingers over the fourth, which shows the whole area in flat miniature. You can’t read the words at first. They look like crawling insects, but you shake your head and squeeze your eyes shut, trying to remember your reading lessons of long ago. When you mouth the word over and over – Midgewater, Midgewater – you finally match it to a word on the map.

“Here in the hills behind,” you raise your head to Thorin. “This is good land for orcish camps. You must send word to the humans to watch out.”

“On what? On your hunch?” Thorin folds his arms and glances around the hall. “They are suspicious enough as it is, Fili, without you claiming to know how an orc’s mind works.”

You breathe in and out shallowly, your voice pressed down by that distance between you and your uncle – the sensation, ever-present, that you don’t belong here, that you don’t understand their ways, that you are wrong at every turn – and you can’t find the words. You say petulantly, “What if I’m right?”

“I will put watchmen on the edge of the town,” Thorin says quietly. “I’ll say it’s to keep an eye out for humans. That’s all we can do for tonight, while tensions are so high.”

You watch him leave you to go speak to Dwalin, and you’re left in the corner with the maps you can’t read and your brother yawning behind you.

\---

It's silent outside. The night insects and birds have finished their evening chorus and there are no lights in the windows of the town. You stretch onto the toes of your good leg to peer out Balin's window to make sure, listening for the distant hum of voices or the slam of a door. Nothing. Only the watchmen will be awake at this hour.

When you turn around, your brother has raised his head from the pillow of his arm and is watching you. He was sleeping on the floor beside your pallet; Balin suggested he stay the night in Thorin's house, where there was more room, but he wouldn't leave you. You make a sign to tell him to follow you, accustomed to silence after years of hunting together. You gather up outdoor clothes, a fresh handful of moss, and a crutch that Balin gave you and, with a lot of patience, manage to lift the latch of the door as quietly as possible and ease it open. Kili follows you outside and down the steps, shutting the door just as softly behind him.

You sit down on the bottom step and start pulling on a boot. Kili crouches beside you.

"I dun think we should scarper yet," he whispers, his brow tightening into a frown. "Y'still sick, Fili. We'nt get far."

"I'm not running away," you reply, keeping your voice barely louder than a breath. "I'm going to look for orcs."

"Eh?" his frown deepens.

"They wouldn't come this far from home except in great numbers," you explain, trying to figure out how to lace up the boots. In the end you just wrap the long cords around your ankles and tie them off. You stuff the moss into your mouth and chew it quickly. "They must be planning a major raid near Bree. It'll be tomorrow evening at the latest. I remember their maps, Kili, I know their secret routes and where they'll camp. I'll come back and tell Thorin what I saw, and he'll tell Bree and together they'll attack the orcs first and human families won't have to die."

"But i'miles!" Kili protests, grabbing your knees before you can stand. He crouches in front of you. "And you're sicked!"

"I can make it."

"I'll go," his fingers dig into your knees, his features grim. "Tell me where - I'll go."

"It's too complicated. You'll get lost."

"Then I come!" he begs. 

You smile at him, with his fierce, dark brows and stubborn mouth, and grip his face in your hands, holding his gaze. "In the morning, you tell Thorin where I've gone. Then he'll take me seriously, and send a warning to Bree if I don't return. But I _will_ come back, yeah? I will. I would never, ever leave you, would I?"

He throws his arms around your neck and you hug him tight, so close you feel like you could pull him under your skin and hide him in the cage of your ribs. But you can't protect him alone, not any more. The dark void on the horizon feels like it's creeping ever closer, and its whispers sound like swords and axes hacking into flesh, like the screams of ambushed men and dwarves. You're not really doing this for the humans who the orcs may kill, or even for yourself, to assuage some guilt over twice abandoning the victims of orc raids, once as a child and once with an axe in your hand. You're doing it because the world will be a better place for your brother afterwards.

As you break apart, he squeezes your shoulder. "I'll hide 'em f'you till dawn. Then I go to Thorin."

"Tell him to keep the watchmen watching."

He nods and lets you go. You heave yourself up onto the crutch and begin to walk. Your leg's not too painful if you sort of swing from the hip, and you quickly figure out how to stay just as silent as ever. When you look back, Kili's face is still turned towards you, until you sneak around the next hut and Balin's doorstep is out of sight.


	9. the hermit returns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh dear I seem to be showing my love of orcs again sorryyyyy

There is a fat, nearly-full moon hanging in the sky. It’s hard to find a shadowy route through the trees where the watchmen won't see you, but navigation is a bit easier once you rejoin the road. You speed up, putting your good leg down silently and swinging your bad one through in a smooth, rhythmic motion. It hurts, and every time it jars particularly badly your muscles clench and that makes it _worse_. But ‘things hurt’ is the story of your life. You know how to push yourself, how to make a mantra, _twenty more steps and you can rest_ , and then pause only long enough for the heat of your wound to die down before moving on. 

You had stared at the roadmap around Bree for some time after Thorin left you, and slowly the cart path grows wider and branches join it, leading to the small farming communities that centre around Bree itself. You turn off at a signpost you can't read, but with a memorable shape to the crossroads, intending to pass south of the village and then turn north to cut around the Midgewater swamp and reach the hills behind it. The forest is behind you now, and the road is lined with low stone walls over which sheep and cattle sleep in huddles. You're so pleased with your pace that you almost don't hear the voices and thud of footsteps that means men are approaching from the other direction.

As your eyes catch a glimpse of torchlight coming around the corner, you curse inside your head and drag yourself off the road. You can't get over the wall in time with your injured leg, but you throw yourself flat in the thick grass at the foot of the wall and freeze, breathing as soft and evenly as you can. You and Kili have long learned how to lie in wait for animals like this, but men are smarter than animals, and there's nothing to cover you. All you can do is hope that they're walking home drunk and aren't looking for other travellers on the road.

As the men come into sight – three of them, one only a youngster carrying a lamp – you can tell they aren't drunk, but they are deeply preoccupied in their conversation.

"We should have turned off back-a-ways! We're s'posed to be meeting at the ruins on the east of town. Why're we going so far?"

"We're going to wake John Sandleford, you lump," one of others replies. "The mayor's only got a dozen names 'as replied to his summons, and we'll need at least twice that, and whatever farmhands they 'as at home. Sandleford will stand with us if we come knockin' at this hour shouting an' makin' a fuss."

"It seems like so many, Da," the boy says. You can hear the apprehension in his voice, and can't help but be reminded of your brother. However, his next words steal your breath. "I mean, dwarves are only small, and they don't know we's coming."

"Don't be an idiot, Gideon," his father pinches his ear until he pulls away. "All dwarves are war-makers and hard to kill. They been pickin' fights and killin' goblins since they was in the crib! They don't know how to live peaceable lives, tha's why they got no sense of law 'n order. Never underestimate 'em, they'll fly off the handle at any excuse!"

"Awright, awright," Gideon whines, rubbing his ear. The group has almost passed by, their feet making the earth shudder where you lie. You hold your breath. They're almost gone. "We going tonight, then? Get them bandits while they's sleeping?"

"Naw, boy," the other farmer spits to the side, and you hear it land in the grass less than a foot from your head. You try to think like stones and twigs, not even blinking. "We can't see in the dark as good as dwarves. Tomorrow sometime, when the signal comes."

And then they've passed you and their conversation fades with their bobbing lamp. You wait until it's no more than a spark down the road before you finally release the breath you've been holding. Once you're completely sure the road is empty and silent, you slowly get to your feet, your leg aching, and find your crutch in the grass. 

Your heart is racing. So the mayor really isn't going to let the matter go - he's going to the dwarf town to get what he wants with force. And you left Kili there on his own! You swallow, looking back the way you came. You could be on Thorin's doorstep before anyone has even noticed you missing, and tell him everything. He would never let the humans take you and Kili. But then again, what about the rest of the town? They don't want you here. They might tell Thorin to send you away immediately, to the Blue Mountains you are beginning to dread. You imagine them as cold, cramped labyrinths under miles of stone, full of snotty children and harangued grandmothers, where you will be cut off from the smell of the forest and the watchful stars. Kili was right. That's no place for you to live. Or worse yet, the other dwarves might actually make Thorin hand you over to the humans! And who knows what they will do to you?

No, you must carry on with your plan. If you reveal the presence of an orc raiding party, then the humans and dwarves will be united against them, and you will have shown your worth. It will solve all your problems with one blow.

You go on, as fast as you can, your leg a constant ache. The numbness of the medicine moss fades and the pain becomes sharp, like there’s glass in there that you can’t loosen. On and on. You can smell the marshes when the road passes by them, occasionally cutting through the bogs on raised earth. Even by night, the insects are thick in the air, invisible but batting against your face constantly. You keep going; twenty more paces, a pause, twenty paces, a pause, twenty, pause, twenty.

The moon has passed over your head and is sinking now. You turn off when you see the silvered slopes of hills on your left. Now you have to find your own path, in the dark and in rough land full of rabbit-holes and thin streams draining into the marsh. You’re so exhausted you sit down at one point and wonder if you will be able to get up, but you pinch yourself, think of Kili’s face and find the strength to dig your crutch into the earth and heave yourself up.

You don’t think about the return journey. It’s not complete folly. If there is one thing you’ve learned in the forest, it's that no matter how hunger bites you or cold drains you, no matter how far you’re pushed, no matter how often you think you’re spent, that there’s nothing more to give, you are _always_ wrong. If you’d been right, you would have died a hundred times in the years since you were lost. If you fight, you have always found a few grains of strength left to feed your brother, to survive a snowy night, to rebuild a shelter or walk those last few hours to safety.

And then you smell the campfires.

You drop low, trying to breathe quietly. They will have watchmen on guard and maybe even traps set around the camp. You listen hard for the shuffle of feet or the clink of armour, and a few scraps of conversation float back to you on the wind – but far away. Slowly, slowly you crawl forward on our belly, dragging your bad leg, your crutch hooked over one arm, and finally the camp comes into view.

They are set up against the high bank of an ancient riverbed, with a sandy cliff at their backs. There have to be more than forty of them, lightly armoured for travelling but with long swords, hammers and axes hanging at their waists. Guttural voices and black laughter fill the air, and the clank and scrape of blades being sharpened. The scant remains of two butchered cows lie in the centre, and standing over the largest fire, staring into its depths, you see—

Radnu, your tall friend from that summer long ago, and squat Smagbal still standing beside him. Radnu’s head is dipped towards his second-in-command, speaking to him, and when Smagbal replies, his leader throws back his head and laughs.

All at once, like a flood in the mountains, an idea fills your mind. The orcs are not here for honour or glory; they are here because the humans do not _know_ they are here. Because the pickings are richer and unguarded. The orcs do not want to fight except against those who cannot fight back. The plans comes together behind your eyes. Before you can think twice, you brace your hands against the dirt and heave yourself onto your good knee, and from there onto your feet. You leave the crutch in the grass. You can apologise to Balin for losing it.

Swaying only a little, you cup your hands around your mouth. There’s a fire in your head very different from the fear and discomfort you felt among the dwarves. You suck in a breath and call, “Ho! Orcs of the north mountains!”

The chatter dies away among the clusters nearest where you stand, though you know they can’t see you as more than a shadow amongst the bushes. A few orcs get slowly to their feet, and they claw at the knives on their belt. You call, “Radnu! Chief among orcs! How fare you?”

The quiet spreads across the whole pack, and Radnu turns sharply, his keen eyes stabbing into the darkness. After a moment, he calls in his rough voice, “Greetings, slithering worm. Why do you hide from us?”

“I will come out so you can see me,” you call, and you take a breath, hoping against hope that you haven’t made a terrible mistake, and limp out of the bushes and into the light of the fire. “I am the hermit of the mountains,” you say as you walk. If you keep them listening, they will be too curious to kill you just yet. “Do you remember me?”

Several of the orcs nearby glance at each other, and one elbows his neighbour. Some of them do remember. There’s a bray of laughter. Radnu raises his arms. “It is the not-dwarf! The mountain climber! The feather-giver! Let him pass.”

The orcs around you draw back as you reach them, and then cluster in behind, blocking any hope for escape. You limp on, holding your head high, and when you reach Radnu you have to resist the urge to bow the way you’d been trying to learn with the dwarves all day. You fold your arms instead, and nod at him. “My heart is glad to see you alive, and with bold new scars,” you tell him.

“And you are well groomed,” Radnu growls. You try not to react to that, only jerking your chin up. You’re incredibly relieved that Balin didn’t manage to comb your hair into shape like Kili’s, and that there’s plenty of dirt on your face from your journey of the last few hours.

“I have been a prisoner of the humans in the village to the west,” you grizzle. “They caught me stealing their crops, only this past month, and cut me badly so I could not run, see, here,” you reached down and tug up your loose breeches to show the edge of the bandage.

“And dressed you in finery,” Smagbal challenges.

“I convinced them I was a lost dwarf prince,” you reply at once. “They are easily fooled.”

He grabs your shoulder, his huge paw covering it, and shakes you with a grin, making your teeth rattle. It’s the closest you’ll get to a welcome. You start to relax.

“Sit down, hermit,” Radnu says, throwing his hand out towards the felled logs around his campfire. “Come, eat.”

The orcs are gathering like flies now to watch you, but Radnu makes no acknowledgement of them, so you ignore them. A cooling hunk of meat is pressed into your hands, and for a moment you think of the leather hood and bile rises in your throat, but you have no choice. You bite into it, and the flesh is pale brown and pinkish in the middle. Orc-flesh is darker, you’re sure if it, and the only bodies nearby were the cows.

You eat as heartily as you can, and your shrunken stomach accepts it gratefully. When you’re finished you lick the fat from your fingers and then look up at Radnu. “I came to warn you. Your presence here is no secret.”

A snarl runs around the listening orcs, and Radnu’s face twists into an even uglier expression than usual. “What is this?” he looms over you. “What have you done?”

“I’ve done nothing!” you snap back, not letting a single note of submissiveness into your voice. “I told you, I was the prisoner of the humans. They know you are planning a raid, and this very night they are gathering militia to strike you in return as soon as they find you. I didn’t tell them where your camp is!” you add quickly, raising your hands. “I escaped a few hours ago, but I made sure none could follow me, I swear to you. I came to warn you.”

Radnu roars and turns where he stands, one hand ripping at the air. He looks back at you with a cruel frown. “Why should we believe you?”

“See for yourself. They are gathering in the ruins east of town. Send scouts there and tell me what they find.”

You are making a gamble here, and you know it; you’ve no idea whether the men of Bree will still be in their shadowy meeting. But you keep your voice strong. It’s strange how much easier it is to speak confidently here, with a circle of orcs hemming you in and gnashing their teeth and pawing at their weapons, than to stammer out the truth to a hall full of dwarves. You feel like a different person than you did back there in the town. You feel like you know what you’re doing.

Radnu summons two small, long-legged orcs and tells them to go and find the ruins to check your story. They disappear into the darkness, and you’re left by the fire while the leader takes a patrol around the camp to check for spies or worse. For a while you simply watch the company checking their weapons and discussing the news with tight brows, but shortly Smagbal settles his bulk on the log beside you, watching you. You can see the suspicion in his eyes, and you know he wants you to see it.

“We have not come across you for a long time, hermit,” he says. “Where’ve you been hiding?”

“I like a change of scenery,” you pout. “What’s wrong with that?”

“What kind of scenery?” Smagbal presses. “Go down to Phurunarg, did you?”

It’s one of the common words the orcs use for Moria. You scratch your head. “Nope. Never been. Don’t like dwarf-kind, you know that."

"Not even that little nest of them outside of the human village?" Smagbal asks.

"I think I’ve heard of it," you wrinkle your nose as if trying to remember. "But I would never visit! Ugh! No, after I left you I went south to the land around the Watchtower for winter and then into the forests away West of here for the last year and a half. That’s where I got caught robbing a farm, since we couldn’t get—”

You know several orcish swearwords, and manage to resist all of them, but Smagbal straightens his back and slaps his hand on his knee. You close your eyes and pinch the bridge of your nose.

“Oh, no, do go on,” the orc grins. “You and your shadow, I suppose?”

You glance at the flames of the sputtering fire. “My brother. I travel with my brother.”

“And where’s he now?” Smagbal leans in so he can see your face lit by the flames. “Back in that fetid human town enjoying a bit of local hospitality?”

You lace your fingers together, watching the kindling settle in the heart of the fire. The answer comes to your tongue easily. “He’s dead. A farmer killed him this past winter.”

There’s a moment of silence, and then you flinch as Smagbal slaps a hand on your back, his nails jabbing your shoulder. "That is grim news, hermit. We orcs don't have brothers as you do, but I see he was important to you."

His voice isn't so hostile now. In fact, he almost sounds sympathetic, though you didn’t think that was possible. You raise your head to meet his gaze. "You don't have brothers? How?"

"Well, I expect we all have quite a few running around, but we don't know or care," Smagbal barks a laugh. "You must _earn_ an orc's trust, or you'll have none of it!" he says something in his own tongue that you can't decipher, and laughs again when you raise an eyebrow. "An old saying, never you mind."

You get Smagbal talking for a long while after that, trying to keep your own answers to a minimum in case you slip up again. You're nervously aware of the moon sinking low on the horizon and the trilling of birds with the coming dawn. You need to get moving, get back to the dwarf town and tell Thorin everything you've learned. There is already a blue-gold glow above the hills by the time the scouts return.

They're running at full tilt and calling for their leader. "It's true! It's true!" they cry as they reach the central campfire and Radnu strides over to listen to them. "The humans have amassed weapons enough for many men, and though we only saw a handful, others came and went while we watched. We're walking into an ambush!"

Radnu roars. "Rot and rubbish! So they have weapons – they will not be prepared for us—"

There are bellows and shrieks. Other orcs slap their breasts or tear at the empty air. "You said we had left such defences behind! You said they would be as easy to crush as snails without shells!"

You cower down beside the log as Smagbal leaps up to defend his commander. The orcs around you are in a frenzy now. "We came all this way for nothing, for more swords on which to die!"

"We have not had a good haul for a year. Where is the tender meat you promised us? Where are the juicy farms waiting for our torches?"

"Silence! All of you!" Radnu roars and the growling dies down to a low rumble. Behind your eyes flashes an image of Thorin, demanding the attention of his own people. In your head the two lie over each other like images painted on glass and flow together until you can't be sure what you feel about either.

Radnu points at the nearest scout. "You! Was it only men you saw? Were there any dwarves?"

"No, sir," the scout rasps. "All humans."

Radnu raises his arms. "I promised you an easy haul, and that is what I shall give you!" he bellows. His orcs crack their teeth, their eyes lighting up. "There is a dwarf town on the edge of the human cesspool. If they knew what the humans know, they would not be able to resist a fight, and the scouts would have seen them. They must lie unwitting and unarmed! They will be our prize!" a hungry murmur begins to rise, and you feel as if you had fallen through a sheet of ice into the freezing river below. Radnu continues, his voice rising, "Their forges are full of good steel and their bones hang with fresh meat! Any who surrender will be fine slaves for us to take back to our kin, and show them that I, Radnu, command the finest pack in all of the mountains!" he roars wordlessly and the orcs cheer, filling the hills with their glee, shaking their swords in the air. 

You gape up at the orc leader, and then turn to Smagbal, who is howling and beating his breast in turn. What have you done? No, no this can't happening – you must stop it –

"We will bypass the human village completely," Radnu shakes his fist. "We will strike from the forest at nightfall tomorrow. We will return home with dwarf blood on our chins!"

The roars get louder and louder, filling your head. In your mind you can already see Thorin slain, and Balin and Dori too, their bodies roasted and consumed, the old dwarves like Viss bound so their throats can be cut without a struggle, while Kili is taken prisoner with the other young ones, a slave and a toy to the orcs' whims, doomed never to smile again, to fade and die under their abuse— you feel numb, you want to scream but you must not, you must wake up and _think_ , how do you stop this, how? Can you slip away now, while they're distracted? But as soon as they realise you're gone they will hunt you, and you'll never outrun them on your bad leg. Could you convince Radnu to let you go? Would he believe you if you said you wanted to return to the forest? No, no, if you show any reluctance to help them they'll know you came from the dwarf town. You want to close your eyes and press your hands over your ears, curl up until it goes away. But you must stay vigilant. You must, at the least, get away from here alive. It's the only chance you have to warn the town. 

Radnu lifts his hands for quiet. His voice is pragmatic now. "We will shift the camp south of the road before the sun rises too high. Pack quickly! We go now!" 

He begins to direct his company, ordering the lower ranks to carry the heaviest gear while the more experienced soldiers take the lead in case they should meet enemies on the way. Dirt is thrown on the fires and the orcs swarm into a rough cluster. Radnu saunters up the bank behind the camp and stands at the top, pointing in the direction they will be travelling. The sun is rising over the hills behind, turning him into a shadow against the red-gold glare and obscuring his face. 

"Well?" he calls. "Get moving, you lazy gluttons!"

And it is at that moment that an axe swings out of the blinding sunlight behind him and cleaves his head in two.

There are squawks of surprise, and it takes a moment before all the orcs are looking east to see what's happened. The axe is jerked out of Radnu's head and his body falls forward slowly and plunges off the bank to crumple at the feet of the orcs below. At the top where he stood a moment ago, you recognise the stout figure of Dwalin, lifting an axe in each hand. He roars something that is only noises to your ears—

_(You don’t even recognise Khuzdul; how your mother would have sighed to see it.)_

—and the frozen moment is broken as Smagbal cries out, _"Radnu! No! Radnu!"_

One of the smaller orcs answers, "It's the humans! They've found us!" and then the panic starts. Some of the orcs scatter at once away from the bank, and Dwalin gives a roar to egg them on. The others mill about, Smagbal getting his bearings.

"Stay together!" he calls, trying to grab at one of his fleeing kinsmen. "Form ranks! _Form ranks!_ "

"There's more behind us. They're everywhere!" yelps someone, and half the remaining company flee, heading north, throwing down their packs if they have them.

You are on your feet now, turning on the spot to figure out what's happening. One of the few orcs who hasn't fled gives a gurgle and falls with a short arrow buried in his throat. Smagbal is still yelling to get the others under control, but there's no hope of it. He turns suddenly to you, a huge, round monster with jagged armour, and you think this is it, this is the moment you die for your mistakes.

"Better stay with those cowards," is all he says to you. "Come on, hermit! Stick close to me!"

The only orcs left are the few who decided to climb the bank to get at Dwalin, and he's making short work of them with the long reach of his axes. One gets close and lunges with its sword, but another arrow pierces its arm and gives Dwalin time to slam his blade into its heart. At the same moment, Smagbal grabs your arm, claws digging in so hard your fingers tingle. You shake your head, thinking fast as you try to pull away. "My leg – I can't run – you go, save yourself—"

He curses in his own language, bends and sweeps you up onto his back with your legs on either side of his waist. Your nose is suddenly full of the sour-milk smell of orc, and his armour is hard against your chest, but you hang on by instinct as he breaks into a sprint for the trees. Before he can reach the edge of the riverbed, you hear the soft _whip_ of a bowstring and an arrow plunges into his leg, between the plates of his armour. You look into the trees and see a flash of Kili’s face, drained to white. At the same moment, Smagbal’s cry reverberates through your chest and you hide your face, the blood pounding in your ears. There's an answering bellow and Thorin bursts out of the trees, sword raised.

Smagbal doesn't just drop you, but hurls you aside, drawing his own sword and meeting Thorin's with a clang and a burst of sparks. You hit the dry stones and roll over onto your stomach to see them circling each other, Smagbal looming over Thorin with no sign of discomfort from the arrow digging deep into his flesh. Thorin strikes towards an opening on Smagbal's side, but the orc parries it easily to send Thorin stumbling into his range. He brings his arm up to smack Thorin hard across the face with his gauntlet, and Thorin barely manages to throw himself out of the way of Smagbal's swinging sword. Blood is pouring from his nose and he can't recover his balance, can only just get his sword up to block Smagbal's next slash from above, shoving the orc a couple of steps backwards as the dwarf falls. Thorin manages to wriggle away and lunges to his feet, but he lowers his sword to do it, and then— 

You see the moment stretch out, Smagbal bringing his arm around for a deadly blow as Thorin crouches with not enough time to raise his weapon, and somehow you're already flinging yourself forward before you can make the decision. You can't reach Smagbal's sword arm high above you, but you grab for the arrow in his leg, wrapping your other hand around his knee, and you wrench the bolt sideways. 

You feel muscle and skin tear and Smagbal gives a scream of pain. His blade falters and falls short. Thorin is up and thrusting his sword forward before the orc has even turned to see the source of his pain. The point of the sword plunges into Smagbal's throat and exits out the side, half severing his head from his body. 

The orc jerks away with some primal strength, dragging you with him, and twists as he falls. You find yourself on your knees, draped over his body as his limbs twitch. Black blood is spewing across the ground, and Smagbal's eyes meet yours, and then look away and hang unfocused. The blood is slowing as you feel strong arms grabbing your shoulders and hauling you to your feet.

"Let's go! Dwalin, move!" Thorin roars somewhere near your ear. There are three other dwarves on the dry riverbed, though Balin is the only one you recognise, and at the edge of the trees you see Kili on one knee with an arrow nocked, searching for another threat. His eyes are wide and his mouth hangs open as he gasps. A few of the orcs that fled the attack are turning to watch. They will see that the dwarves number only half a dozen. They'll come back to avenge their dead. Thorin is sensibly calling for a retreat.

Your leg feels as if it's been torn open all over again as you stumble after Thorin, keeping your balance with one of his hands on the scruff of your neck. Kili appears beside you at a loping run and slips under your arm on the far side of Thorin to hold you up. He's got a stout bow slung over his shoulder, smaller than his orcish one. Dwalin is at the rear, and when your leg simply gives out and you fall, he's the one who heaves you up, throws you over his shoulder and bellows for the others to hurry. You cling to Dwalin's clothes, looking back through the thin trees to where the orcs camp lay. It takes all your strength to stay conscious. 

The next thing you're aware of is the sight of the dirt road under Dwalin's feet. There's a pause while Thorin takes stock and confirms that you're the only one who's injured. Blood is still oozing from his nose, clotting in his beard, but he smears the thickest lumps away with the back of his hand. It looks like war paint. Your own hands are daubed with paint too; black paint, cooling quickly in the morning air. It smells the same as dwarf blood. You can feel it on your cheeks and brow. 

Dwalin sets you on your feet. You struggle to stay upright. When you've taken a few breaths, you realise you're standing alone. The rest of the dwarves are staring at you. For a moment you hold Thorin's gaze, and then a wave of dizziness hits you and you sit down right there on the road, clutching your head. Kili runs to your side, his hands on your neck and arm. He presses his face into your hair, whispering, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Balin catch y'missing, made me tell Thorin."

You raise your hand to rest it against his head and lift your gaze with great effort to look at your uncle. The boggy land around you is lit with the warm dawn light, and there are dragonflies humming through the air. 

You whisper, "What am I? What am I?" but your can’t make your voice any louder.

Thorin doesn't answer, maybe won't, maybe doesn't know what you mean. Kili's arms snake around your neck and tighten. "Why y'always get in messes, Fili?" 

You can't tell him the truth; that it's because you're older, because you're the one who has to take charge, has to take all the risks that have saved both your lives all these years. You had to change yourself so much to keep you both afloat. You suck in one lungful of air after another, digging your fingers into your brother’s combed hair, not even recognising the smell of him, the clean skin and good clothes. Maybe there’s hope for him yet, but you? How can you ever undo it all, how can you ever build up the seed of Fili and call him a dwarf? This creature ‘Fili’ isn’t anything with a name anymore. But your uncle is still watching you, and there’s only patience in his eyes.

"What was your plan if they hadn't bolted?" you ask him. 

"Dwalin was just going to draw them away from you. We didn't expect them to scatter," he replies. "Nor for that big one to grab you."

You found a choking lump in your throat. You blink the dampness out of your eyes, telling yourself it's only the pain in your leg. "He was protecting me," you croak.

Thorin glances at the other dwarves, his expression hard as stone. He says at last, "We need to move on."

"And you've pulled your stitches, laddie, I warned you," Balin gripes, hurrying up to you and heaving you onto your feet. He touches the back of your leg, where blood is seeping right through your breeches. "Aye, what a mess."

Thorin wants to go quickly, which means Dwalin has to carry you again. You end up on his back, his arms looped under your legs and your hands hanging in front of his chest. It's exactly how the orc had carried you, those scant few metres. Orcs – dwarves – you can't remember which one you were supposed to stand beside. You feel like a piece of meat tugged back and forth between two wildcats, and now being jolted up and down by Dwalin's jogging. As the party makes a fast pace along the road, your thoughts start to come back together. You sit up a little in Dwalin's grip and call for Thorin to listen. 

As the dwarves hurry onwards, you tell him everything you heard and saw. You don't leave any part out, especially not the fact that the orcs were going to attack the town. You make one exception for the conversation you had with Smagbal by the fire. It's not that you care anymore whether the dwarves know of your friendship with him. Let them know – you must already be lower than dirt in their eyes. But Kili is listening, and you don't want him to hear that you told Smagbal he was dead. You only did it to protect him, in case they turned on you, but it still feels like you were taking the chance to cut him away from your life. And he's the only thing left that you still want to hold close.


	10. the end of the town

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this chapter took forever and ever, I had such trouble with it, and I'm still not satisfied. But at some point I had to stop rewriting and set it down. I think this will have to be close enough to acceptable! Thank you all for reading - there will be probably only one more chapter after this.

When he hears about what the men are planning, Thorin urges the dwarves into a swift pace. The road you took half the night to traverse disappears by the time the town is finishing their breakfast somewhere ahead. Soon you enter the wide dwarf-made path that branches off from the Bree roads. It feels like some luck at last that you haven't met anyone on the way, neither human nor dwarf. You're so tired you have to focus not to fall slip away right there on Dwalin's back. You can't wait to drink clean water and lie down in Balin's hut - maybe he'll leave your stitches until you've had a sleep. 

As you reach the town, Thorin holds up his hand. Everyone stops, except for Kili who has to be grabbed by Balin. You're clustered on the edge of the forest, looking up at the huts climbing away towards the cliff, with the stone meeting hall at their pinnacle. A few chimneys are smoking and the water wheel at the bottom of the town is churning. 

Dwalin calls to him, "Why are we stopped? What's the matter now?"

Thorin shakes his head. "I don't know."

Dwalin puts you down and Kili helps you limp over to your uncle as he leads you up the path towards the centre of town. You can feel what's got him on edge. The dwarf voices are missing from the town's sedate noises. There's birdsong, but no greetings or the yells off dwarves arguing over whose turn it is to fetch water. The windows you pass by are empty. It feels like the forest when a predator has just made a kill. 

Thorin glances back at Balin, "I should have left you to keep an eye on things."

"I'm sure you're just worked up. It's midmorning, they'll be in the caves or the pools," Balin soothes. When Thorin shoots him a dark look, he sighs. "Alright. I'll go up to the hall and find someone, see what's happening. Come on," he beckons to the two dwarves whose names you don't know, and they follow him off between the houses. 

In the centre of the town the houses stand in a circle around an empty patch of land, a rough approximation to a village square. As Thorin turns to look around he gives a cry of alarm. Two of the huts – his own and Balin's – stand with their doors open, and even from a distance you can see the disarray. Two of Balin's hand-carved stools and a number of furs have been thrown out onto the steps, and everything in the shadows within has been overturned or shattered. Thorin grabs yours and Kili's hand like you were children and drags you both behind him while Dwalin storms towards the huts. He disappears into Thorin's and emerges soon enough, shaking his head. 

"Empty."

"Yes, they were, King Thorin," calls a voice from across the square. You spin around to see the mayor of Bree emerging from behind a hut across the way, with a dozen men flanking him and twenty more appearing from the far side, to cut Dwalin off from you. They're farmers and merchants, not soldiers, and many are young and beardless, sticking closer to their fathers and older brothers. But the morning sun glints on blades – short swords, some no more than rusty heirlooms, and for others no swords at all, just sickles and kitchen knives jammed into belts.

“What is this?” Thorin roars “What business have you, creeping through our homes, armed and without invitation?”

“You know why we’re here, dwarf,” the mayor calls. “Hand over the criminals you’re harbouring, and our quarrel will be over.”

His lazy drawl is belayed by a nervous shift of his feet. You may not know much about men, but you recognise a hollow boaster when you see one. But those sickles aren’t hollow, and many of the men have drawn their knives and hold them thrust forward in twitching hands. You spin where you stand, looking for an exit, but the only clear gap between the two flanks leads up the terraces to the cliff, where you would be trapped. And men run fast, you know from experience. All you can do is stand with your back to Thorin and Kili between you both, waiting for them to make the first move. Your brother still has his little dwarven bow, but he looks to you as he reaches for an arrow and freezes when you shake your head. Not yet; not until they're coming right at you. 

“You have made this quarrel out of your pride and spite,” Thorin replies to the mayor, raising his hand and pointing at the man. “All of you will turn and go home. How dare you threaten bloodshed over grain and scarves? Do you not know where I have been tonight? On your eastern border, routing an orc camp! Yes, there are raiders out there, real enemies, and you are wasting your strength with this folly!”

"You are a liar!" the mayor laughs. "Orcs? In these parts? You must miss having power, dwarf, if you invent fine battles for yourself! You sad, fallen creature. I wonder if it's even true that your forefathers were kings, or if that's another dream to make your sorry life less pitiful."

Thorin snarls and grabs for his sword. Before you think twice about it you reach out and put your hand over his, feeling hot blood pulse beneath his skin and scars. You see a tremor run down his arm, and then he relaxes. He pulls out his sword slowly and holds it up as if it were a gift, one hand cupping the tip of the blade. "I did not invent the black blood you see on me, or on Fili beside me," he calls. "Nor my own blood on my face," he throws the sword down into the dirt. "There - I do not even want a weapon to face you, because I know you are not my enemy."

This has got the humans' attention, and they are whispering to each other with knitted brows. The mayor opens his mouth to speak, but before he can, there is a man beside his ear, hissing and pointing at you and your brother. It’s the tracker again. 

“That’s them, those two with him,” the mayor calls to his makeshift soldiers.

You press in closer to Thorin, pinning Kili between you. You wish more than anything for thick trees and rough ground to hide you. Dwalin tries to step away from the hut, his eyes locked on Thorin, but the humans move in with their rough weapons and he hesitates with a grimace. The mayor waves forward the largest men in his gang, their hands wrapped around clubs or woodcutter's axes. He growls impatiently. “Take them!”

“I don’t think so, boy!” cries a voice from behind you, and a heavyset figure comes thudding down between the huts and storms up to stand beside Thorin. It’s Viss, old Oin’s wife. And then two more figures stride past you, and then more and more, many of them clutching their skirts and shaking fists. Before you know it, it seems that almost every woman in the town is ringing you and Kili, jostling you and joining together behind Thorin and Viss.

A young woman whose sideburns haven't reached her chin yet hisses to Thorin, "They locked the men in the hall, Thorin! We hid in the forges. Balin's breaking them out right now."

Viss is speaking over her. “Go back and hang your heads!” she grates, stepping away from the circle to throw her arm out and point back towards Bree. "You filthy wretches!"

The mayor takes a step forward, but it’s not a large one. His tone is off balance as he calls, “We’re not here for you and your families, Old Mother. We’re only protecting our own.”

“Oh, yes? Have children, do you?” Viss replies. “And what are they to you? Mere labour for the farms, made cheaply and lost easily? I could teach you a thing about protecting families, young man! You may think we love only gold and gems, but all the treasure in the world can never sum to the value of our children! You think we’d hand them over to you? Pah!” she punctuates this with a fat gob of spit ejected into the dirt. “I will die before I let you pass. And if you think you can move dwarf women who don’t want to be moved, you are in for a rude shock!”

There is a chorus of stony cheers from the women around her, their beads rattling in their hair. Kili presses in close to your side. You don’t blame him. The women around you are grim-faced and muttering curses to themselves, clicking their knuckles and shaking them out again in preparation for a fight with their bare hands. You’re already more afraid of them than you were of the orcs, and this time they’re on _your_ side. At the same time, a strange thrill is growing inside of you. It reminds you of the first time you snared a forest pigeon all those years ago. In the moments where you knew, after weeks of failure, that you had bought a day without hunger, and the distant but undeniable promise of more to come. 

The mayor heaves in a breath, his brow wrinkling and his mouth curving so far down it looks like it will escape his chin. The women do not let up their grumbles: their voices get louder, shouting insults and demanding the mob leaves. There are wide eyes and mutters all along the humans’ ranks, and a few of them are voicing their concern aloud. The mayor turns and shouts at them not to be cowards against unarmed women, but one of the older men calls, "You said they wouldn't fight when they saw us, sir."

"Advance and they will fall back!" the mayor cries, waving his arm. Not one of the farmers moves an inch. And just like that, you can feel the tension rush out of the mob, like a sandbank collapsing into a river. 

The mayor is the only one left in a rage. He sweeps a dark look over the women gathered around Thorin, who is standing with hands on hips as if he had the finest army in the world at his back. The human shakes his head, his shoulders hunched in his heavy furs - but they're old furs, you notice suddenly, grey and patchy with age, the heirloom of some champion long dead. He grips the sword at his waist and draws it out, quick and clumsy. Thorin makes no move to pick up his own blade, simply raising his chin. The man takes one step forward, and then another, his mouth a hard line.

There's a growing rumble and the thunder of dozens of dwarven footfalls. You look up the path towards the meeting hall and see the rest of the town charging towards you, their braids bouncing and their cheeks flushed with anger, cursing at the top of their voices. They storm between the huts, streaming into lines between the militia and the women. Some of them are carrying the benches from the hall to hold up as shields; you see Dori baring his teeth and brandishing a writing-desk over his head. 

"Get out of it, you sods!"

" _Azan rukhs ai-mênu!_ " 

"Go back to your homes!"

"Where is your honour?" 

"Well?" Viss shouts, her voice filling the air, her tone mocking. "Come closer – we are unarmed and you are so tall! Are you going to attack us like the strong, righteous fellows that you are? Or is that orcs that I'm thinking of?"

Many of the farmers are looking to the mayor and shaking their heads. He turns towards them, then back towards Thorin, and you can feel the molten wire stretching between them, tension pulling it thinner and thinner. But it cannot hold forever. The mayor sheaths his sword, backing towards his rabble. Indeed, they don't look like a militia anymore - just farmers and snotty children who were enjoying the war game until the odds weren't in their favour. They shuffle away from their own leader now, as if humiliation was contagious.

"You may think they're harmless children, but we know better, Thorin Oakenshield," the mayor shouts as one last barb. "You are a fool to protect them."

And with that he turns, striding off with his head held high as if he's the victor after all.

The crowd stays on edge, shifting slightly and half lowering their makeshift shields, as the humans drain away between the huts. No one speaks until they are only tiny figures in the distance, and then Viss sweeps around to glare around the circle. The dwarves have put their benches down and few are sitting on them, breathing out long gasps of air.

"If I never!" she snaps. "Not one of you dared smash down the door to help? You had to wait for Balin to let you out like repentant children?"

There is one young fellow sporting a bloody nose, and another holding his arm to his chest. They weren’t herded into the hall like sheep. Viss can see that too, you know, as she grabs the dwarf with the bleeding nose and hands him a hunk of linen from her pocket, adding a sharp nod. He presses the cloth to his nostrils with a shaking hand.

"We didn't want to start a fight before Thorin had a chance to join in," Oin's voice calls, with a note of mirth, "And you were doing so well on your own, dear!"

"Yes, we didn't want to steal your thunder," someone else adds – you think he's named Nori – with a chuckle.

The joke covers up their fears a little, and Viss’ scolding has hidden the weight of the situation, how close this came to a massacre. You find your legs are shaking, leaning into Kili. He grips an arm around your waist and you make no pretence that you don’t need it. After the night you've had and with the blood you're still oozing, you feel you've rather earned a sit-down. But you’re still hemmed in by dwarves in every direction. People keep asking you if you’re alright, and you can only nod stiffly. After about the forth claustrophobic attempt at concern, Kili snaps at Fagrliga, “We’s _perfect_ , let‘s thru!” and hauls you off between the crowds towards Balin's hut. He sits you on the top step, on one of the furs that had been thrown out the door, and then perches on the bottom, glaring at anyone who comes near you.

\---

The town square becomes a temporary war chamber. Thorin gets his folk into order and sends those who know how to fight to fetch their weapons and keep them close, in case the humans should return, or even the distant orcs come looking for revenge. The dwarves will keep the watchmen on duty for a long time after this. Many of the other others head back to their huts, however, to see it there's been damage done or to find somewhere familiar to recover from the shock. 

Viss strides past you as the war council thins down to only a handful of old warriors. The silver glints in her beard as she looks down at you both, her eyes narrowed.

“You look like you’ll survive,” she says at last, as if in answer to a question.

You grip the railing of Balin’s veranda and heave yourself up onto your good leg. Kili jumps up to stand in front of you, but you nudge him to one side with your elbow and do your best to bow, your hand still clinging to the rail.

“Thank you. I didn't expect all that," you tell her. Your tongue feels thick and clumsy again, the way it was last night in the meeting hall. "The town. I thought… you thought we weren’t worth. Not a lot. Didn’t believe us."

Her expression softens as she shakes her head. “I didn’t, boy, not really. But that ain’t the point, now, is it?”

She turns her head as Thorin arrives, and you can’t read the look they share. Then she’s gone, and your uncle is standing in front of you with a face as dark as when he’d come bursting out of the trees to attack the orcs. He glances at your hand on the railing, fingers wrapped around the wood, knuckles straining up against your blood-smeared skin.

“Your wound needs tending to,” he says gruffly. “Again. _You_ need tending you.”

“I want to know what you have to say first,” you reply.

Kili nods. “Talk first. Sleep later.”

“Very well,” Thorin waves his hand. “Sit down, for your mother’s sake. You look ready to crumble.”

You’re not going to argue with that. A stabbing headache has returned behind your eyes, and even drawing breath seems to take all the energy you have to spare. Thorin pauses, glancing over at the last few members of his council – Dwalin and a pair of black-haired dwarves with grey in their hair – and then sits on the steps as well, resting his hands on his knees. He’s washed most of the blood off his face, but you can still see it staining his bread.

Kili twists around to face Thorin and props an arm up on your knees, sending a twinge through your bad leg. He doesn’t even notice, his eyes locked on your uncle’s face. You see the hard set of Thorin's mouth and you forget your aches for now.

“What’s going to happen?” you ask. “We have to leave, don’t we?”

“Yes,” Thorin says heavily. “The pyre the humans have built will not be easily doused. There will be no friendship between my dwarves and those men while you are here. Ered Luin is the best place for you now, far away from any mischief—”

“No!” Kili cuts in at once, as you might have known he would. “Dun send us off! We’ll go quick – we’ll leave, we’ll go East – dun make us hide in some cold peak—”

“I’m not sending you away, Kili,” Thorin says. In his voice is the patience you’ve only seen the hints of before now. “I’m coming with you. Dwalin too, for at least a little while. We’ll leave tomorrow if Balin says you’re well enough, Fili. But the Blue Mountains are not a prison. I promise you.”

Kili breathes in deep through his nose. “Wha’bout them dwarves?” he mutters. “Them all here. They cry you more’n us.”

“They will be quite alright without me,” Thorin says firmly. “In fact, they will be quite alright without the town. It was never meant to be permanent, this place – half the families have been talking for months about setting up proper shops in Bree. They will have many more customers there, especially if I'm well out of the picture. And we have exchanged letters with almost a dozen other villages where dwarves with new skills would be welcome. The schedules will be pushed forward, and I meant to stay until the end, but Balin can handle selling the land and houses. We already have designs for converting the forge equipment and water wheel into a mill, so we should get a respectable price for it. Those that have close kin in the Blue Mountains will soon follow us back there, I expect, but some from the mountains will leave when their time comes.”

Thorin pauses, and you say quietly, “I didn’t know this town meant so little to you.”

His mouth quirks into something that might be a smile, or a grimace. “My people go where there is life for them, Fili. I don’t think you’re one to argue with that.”

Kili turns to kneel on the step below you, grabbing your hand. “We nen, Fili. Dun have to follow him. We’ll go where we know, away back where we wintered—”

“No, we won’t,” you raise a hand to squeeze his shoulder. “We can’t go back. Not to the forest. Not ever," you see something break in his expression, and tug him in to sit under your arm, hugging him tight. "There's no future for us there. And think of everything in the last few days. I could have died thrice over. If something happens to either of us, I won't let the survivor go on alone." 

Your brother, stubborn and stupid til the end, mutters, "Fine on my own. Don't need you _or_ Thorin."

All you can do is laugh. You shove the back of his head, "Then do what I say because I'm the eldest. Idiot."

"Dung-head."

Thorin joins in with a chuckle. "You sound like my brother and sister, now."

You look up sharply. Into your mind springs an image of a pair of young dwarflings in embroidered, silk clothes, arguing with each other as Thorin looks on. His face is smooth and his hair full black, and the pillars of green marble rising around them to meet above their heads are like the cavern of a dragon's ribcage. It’s an image from old stories, of course – you've never seen the Lonely Mountain, you're not even sure how young Ma was when she left it – but now the stories come back to you clearer than ever. Yet you still can't make out of the face of the dwarf girl, only her laughter as she chases her brother away down the hall, and her voice years later, telling you to come inside from the snow and put your gloves on. 

You swallow around your tongue, which is suddenly dry, and ask, "What Viss said about children, about them being more precious than gold, did Ma believe that?"

"Of course she did," Thorin frowns, and then says cautiously, "Is there any doubt?"

"I have doubt," you whisper. "If she'd left us in Ered Luin like a proper mother, none of this would have happened."

Thorin looks away at the other huts, at the dwarves busying about with armfuls of tools and cheerful greetings, slapping each other on the back if anyone is looking too downcast about the morning’s strife. 

"That's what they say, is it?" Thorin asks.

"Not to me. They didn't say it to me. I just thought it afterwards," you hunch down into your collar, huffing a breath through your beard. It's not anyone else's fault, but it makes sense. You and Kili could have been real dwarves living normal dwarf lives, but Ma was careless, and so you’re here instead. 

Your uncle nods. "I remember they said the same thing when we left the Blue Mountains the first time, when you,” he pokes Kili's arm with his knuckles, “were still a babe in a sling, and your brother was clinging to her skirts. We had nothing to call a kingdom, yet she named me her king-to-be and said that she would follow me as far as I needed her, and when I didn’t, go where I pointed. But there were plenty who wanted her to stay – they wanted to protect their last princess, with Frerin and I going off to war unmarried. And if she wouldn't stay, there wasn't a family in all the Blue Mountains who wouldn't gladly have taken in her little princes. Do you know what she said to them?"

You shake your head. Thorin smiles. "I don't remember it precisely, only the spirit of the words. In front of our father she said she hadn't escaped the dragon's fire by staying in the mountain and looking down, but by sticking close to her brothers and looking forward. If the monarchists came up to her in private, though? She told them to stick it up their tunnels because it was none of their business."

Kili laughs, slapping your bad leg and sending another jolt of pain down it. You can't help smiling, though. Thorin shrugs. "I suspect that's your legacy from her, for ill and for good."


	11. until Ered Luin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the end; nothing can go on forever, and this fic ran far beyond my expectations. It was supposed to be predominantly about the brothers living in the wild and end during chapter six with Fili's fever breaking, but I didn't feel like there was a lot of closure there, and things got way out of hand after that. Thank you very much for reading, and I hope the finale is satisfying enough.

“Kili! Kili – dammit, boy, you look at me when I’m speaking to you – Kili!”

He scrambles over a boulder to the grassy nook where he and Fili spent the night. He can feel his cheeks burning hot as if he’s been out in the sun too long, his heart thudding and the heat spreading down his neck and over the curves of his ears. He snatches up his bow and arrows – more gifts he didn’t ask for, more stupid things he has to keep track of – and swings the quiver onto his back. He can hear Thorin stomping across the camp after him.

_“Kili!”_

He doesn’t glance back. He kicks his way through the scrub and bolts up the slope on the far side, bounding from rock to rock. The trees here are twisted and sparse among the torn cliffs and ravines. When he scales the next ridge the valley opens up beneath him, wide and clear from the sandy tail of the river to the mountains marching away towards the horizon. Their new home is in the distance somewhere, in the cold wind and the treeless rocks. The braided river below is beautiful, as are the white runs of late snow coming off the grey peaks. But what if there’s no sights like this in the Ered Luin halls? What if there’s no open sky, no rivers, no birdsong? Just stone walls and fire in glass lamps and people, people everywhere.

He’s afraid to be trapped. Him and Fili, he’s afraid that they won’t be able to get out. It was bad enough sleeping in the huts back in the town, with the smell of other dwarves thick and condensing throughout the night, and only one door, and locks that squeaked when you touched them. In the mountain the only door might be miles away. And people will laugh behind their hands. And they talk so fast; that’s the worst, that even when Kili thinks he knows the words, they flow so quick that he can’t put them together before they’re gone like sticks in a flooded river. Fili understands them. Fili’s smarter than him. Maybe he’ll even leave Kili behind. Maybe soon he won't notice when Kili needs things repeated to him, won't even understand what Kili is saying at all.

He runs on, down an old slip of jagged stones towards the treeline at the bottom. He knows his way here, even if he’s never been before. The plants are very much like the ones where he grew up, and he has names for each of them. On the rocks just above the scrub there’s sun-dew and sheep-mat and snow-berries as small as a sparrow’s eye. He pinches a few off and squeezes them between his teeth, spitting out the big seeds. He wonders what they’re called in dwarvish – if the dwarves have even noticed them long enough to name them. Two lizards warming themselves in the grayish sunlight scatter as he approaches. He goes past mountain daisies with their thick, tough petals and furry stems, into the twisted black beeches and lace-barks. The trees here are hunched low against the mountain slopes, shorter and stouter than the ones he’s used to.

He stops to drink at a thin creek that smells of snow. As he bends over to cup a handful of water, his hair falls over his face and he pushes it aside impatiently.

His hair, that’s what it was all about. That’s why Thorin was shouting. Because Kili lost the beads from his hair. Only two, as he already gave the rest to Fili, because Fili liked the sparkle, has been treasuring all the shiny things the dwarves make. But Fili put the two little ones in Kili’s hair and he lost them when he was wandering around the camp last night. He didn’t know it until this morning, when Thorin saw them gone.

What did it matter? They were just pretties. They weren’t of any use. But it did matter, because they used to belong to Ma, and Thorin was so angry. Yet another stupid mistake by stupid Kili, who can’t even talk right, who can’t read maps or tell time in hours or name the days. Fili says he’ll learn, he says everybody starts not knowing these things, but he means _children_ , and Kili is not going to get any taller or smarter. 

Kili shakes his head and drinks. He moves on through the trees into patches of bone-branch, a dry, grey tree topped with tiny, green leaves that up here grows barely as tall as a human. Even a dwarf has to crouch over to creep through the tunnels their branches make. The smell of sap is calming and his heartbeat has finally returned to normal, but he feels no urge to return to the camp. 

Part of him wonders what would happen if he just kept walking and never went back. The trip so far has been nothing like the rambling journeys he and Fili used to make every year. Some days they travel from dawn almost until dusk, not stopping early to hunt or forage and save their supplies. That means eating dried meat and hard biscuits every night. Kili is sick to death of dull dwarf food. He wants fruit, he wants fresh rabbit, he wants slow-baked sweet potatoes. But if they have any time in the evenings, Thorin insists they learn etiquette, history and weapons training. 

Talk, talk, talk, and Kili doesn't even know what he's saying half the time! At least he gets stuck with Mr Dwalin most nights because Fili is paying more attention to their uncle. He likes Mr Dwalin, who doesn't make him practice sword fighting any longer than he wants to, even when Thorin complains that Dwalin is being too easy on him. Instead they sit on the edge of the camp and watch Thorin tell Fili the history of every symbol carved into his sheath. Dwalin makes jokes that Kili doesn't understand, but he stares at the older dwarf until Dwalin laughs even harder and explains the joke, and it's always an interesting explanation. More interesting than the crest of so-and-so son of such-and-such who died in the-battle-of-who-cares. 

And then there's the ponies. Kili hates the ponies. It's nice not having to carry supplies, sure, but he absolutely refuses to ride one of the stinking, temperamental beasts. They're heavy and dangerous and they don't like him any more than he likes them. Thorin had eyed him dubiously when Kili insisted he'd keep up on foot, but he has managed the journey quite easily, without shoes or a walking stick. He stays ahead so he doesn't have to look at the ponies' backsides all day, or walks beside Fili's mount if the path is wide enough. But at night he can hear them shifting and whinnying in their sleep and he swears it's giving him nightmares. 

He dreams that he's woken up and Fili is gone, or that he's lost the use of the common tongue completely and everyone's voices sound like the chatter of animals. Sometimes he dreams that they're being attacked by orcs, huge orcs, as big as they seemed when Kili was a child. Fili thinks he doesn't remember that night, but he does – he remembers the sound of dwarves waking to swords in their guts, the shock of Ma pushing him away into Fili’s arms, and Ma snapping at him to run, her face twisted with what he thought was anger because he’d been naughty but which he now understands was fear. Seeing the orcs outside of Bree forced it all to the surface. In his memory he was tiny and weak and frightened. In the dreams he's grown up and strong, but he can't make his arrows fly straight, and all his movements are as slow as if through thick mud. Last night the dream was even worse, because Thorin was watching, not helping as the orcs closed in, telling Kili, "You're doing it wrong. Do as I say. Listen to me."

He told Fili the dream over breakfast and Fili just laughed and said Thorin wasn't that bad, Kili was just looking for reasons to be grumpy. But soon after, their uncle had seen that the beads were missing, and that had led to shouting and accusations and Kili storming off. And now here he was, and he didn't feel like going back, not ever. 

The bone-branch forest falls away behind and he's left trudging along the grassy hillside. The sun comes and goes with the clouds, rising to the apex of the sky and then seeming to hang there like a bird riding the air currents. Kili climbs up a rock outcrop worn from the mountain and watches a pair of falcons circle each other in the valley below. His stomach is starting to grumble. That's one thing he's got used to – regular meals, three times a day. Dwarves never seem to stop eating. He checks his pockets and finds half an oat biscuit that he stashed yesterday. He nibbles at it and the grumble subsides.

As he rounds the curve of the next arm of the hill, he sees a flick of movement in the distance and freezes. Creeping forward through the long grass, the movement resolves into a handful of wild sheep grazing across the slope. They are long-legged, not like the domestic sheep Kili’s seen on human farms, and their wool is short and tanned like the yellow-brown grass. Most of them have their heads down looking for tender grass shoots, but at least one is always raised, watching the landscape as their jaws ceaselessly chew the cud. Usually it's the big ram keeping watch. He's an old, skinny fellow with huge, curling horns longer than Kili's arm. The three females are careful too, though, guarding the four smaller sheep in the flock: two adolescents and a pair of younger twins. 

The thought of lamb for dinner makes Kili's stomach rumble. He and Fili have never hunted one themselves – sheep are rare and skittish in the Eastern mountains, probably because they have orcs for predators – but they've followed the flocks during spring when it's common to find freshly dead lambs on frosty mornings. Today he can't resist, especially with no one here to see if he fails.

He strings his bow, straps the quiver at his hip and then begins to creep forward through the grass, keeping his head low and crawling on his stomach when the ground is bare. The sheep give no sign that they've seen him. He goes as slowly as possible as he gets closer, feeling the ground as he puts each foot down. One of the dams raises her head as he reaches the bank of a thin stream that separates him from the slope where they’re grazing. He can't cross the stream without spooking them. Instead he waits, just back in the grass, bringing the bow around in front and easing an arrow out of the quiver. 

The dam with her twins is nibbling at the juicier grass around the stream. Kili waits and breathes in steady and shallow. The wind groans over his head. He can hear the lambs' hooves as they skitter around their mother and playfully headbutt each other. For half a second, Kili thinks of orcs. Not orcs hiding in the dark forest, waiting for their chance to strike; quite the opposite. He was the one hiding, he was the one firing from the darkness, taking them by surprise. Thorin told him to shoot to kill, and he did, and he can still remember the sound the orcs made as his arrows punched through flesh and cartilage. In their dying they sounded not so different from dwarves. Thorin said it was all to rescue the kidnapped Fili, but Kili knew better and he still said nothing – afraid his uncle and Dwalin would misunderstand him, afraid they’d laugh, afraid they’d think he was stupid. And afterwards, Fili told him the orcs were planning to raid the dwarf town, so that made it alright to kill them, didn’t it?

Before he can think on it a moment longer, one of the lambs darts closer to the stream to avoid its brother. Kili draws back the arrow and fires. He rushes it, making too big a movement, and the sheep panic and bolt, their hooves thudding so hard Kili can feel it in his knees against the earth. But the arrow has hit home. The injured lamb gives a sharp, wretched bleat and flees. Kili springs up from his spot in the grass, plunges through the stream and gives chase. The lamb is running through the tussocks, trying to follow its mother and brother, but it's slow. Kili can see the arrow hanging from its front flank. One leg is stiff and dragging.

As the hill's slope grows shallow, the lamb reaches a bare seat of rock and collapses onto its knees. Kili puts on an extra burst of speed, and doesn't even see the rabbit hole before his next step lands on the edge of it, his foot rolling and sending his whole weight onto the bend of his ankle. 

He yelps as he goes down, agony ripping up his leg. He tries to jump up and there's another white flash of pain. He lets out a few choice curses that Dwalin has taught him and sits down on a bush to straighten his leg out in front of him. His ankle throbs with every heartbeat.

"Good job, Kili," he sighs. “Mighty clever, you are.”

It's not broken – he'd be lying on the ground howling for his brother, if it was broken – but he's not going to be sprinting any time soon. He straightens up shakily and limps into the clearing towards the lamb. Its cries are very soft now, but it’s stopped trying to stand up. Kili crosses the bare rock, takes hold off its head and fumbles at his belt for the knife. It's Dwalin’s knife, which Kili picked up this morning when the older dwarf wasn't watching his pack. He only meant to use it for cutting a bit of broom tree he'd seen by the camp, to dry during the day for tea tomorrow, but after the fight with Thorin he forgot to give it back.

He cuts the lamb's throat as quickly as he can. As he cradles it through it the end, there's a tap of hooves on stone. Kili looks up. 

The ram stands at the edge of the grass. Its head is lowered, its eyes locked on him. It scrapes one hoof on the stone, dropping its huge horns into position. 

Kili swallows. The ram charges. 

He manages to throw himself aside on the first charge, landing on his stomach against the bare rock and scraping one hand. The ram curves around and comes back for a second charge. Kili shoves himself up, but his ankle flares and his knee unlocks, sending him sprawling right in the ram's path. He rolls just as it reaches him to avoid being trampled, and as it comes around again he knows he's got to do something or he's going to end up with his chest crushed in. He staggers upright and rolls with the blow as the ram hits him, wrapping an arm around its neck. Dwalin's knife is still in his hand and he knows where to sink it in and drag it out, tearing open blood vessels he doesn’t have names for. 

It seems a long time later when the ram finally stops kicking. Kili lets it go and collapses back to lie on the rock and stare up at the sun. The clouds slide across it in aimless patterns. His heart starts to patter back to a regular pace. 

He groans as he sits up. He's sticky with the ram's blood, but his bruises seem to be at a minimum. He gets to his feet and hisses as soon as he tries to put any weight on the ankle. First things first. He's not going anywhere unless he can tend to this. He limps and slides down the hill back to the stream.

On the bank, he sinks his whole foot up to his calf in the snow-melt water. The bone-deep ache of the cold sets in within seconds, but it's numbing too. To distract himself while he tries to get the swelling down he cups handfuls of water and washes the blood off his arms and clothes as best he can.

Thorin would approve. Thorin is always trying to keep him clean. Kili doesn't want to do anything else to disappoint Thorin; and he suppose the fact that he's washing himself up answers his question about going back to camp. He's missing his brother too, now. He wants to tell him about tripping in the rabbit hole, make him laugh. Running away is pretty lonely. 

Once he can't stand the cold water a moment longer he lifts his foot out, breaks off some long, tough leaves of grass nearby and binds his ankle and heel as tight as he can. When he stands on it now the pain is just a faint whine, and the binding keeps it from rolling again. He gathers a few more leaves under his arm and goes back up the slope to where he left his kills. 

A few insects have already settled on the ram, though not many this high in the mountains. Kili sits on his good heel for a minute while he thinks what to do. He only meant to take the lamb back to camp, but leaving the ram… all that meat, those beautiful horns that could be carved into fine tools, the bones for making fish-hooks and tying into tent poles, and the skin that the dwarves know how to tan into leather. It's too much waste to bear. After a couple of minutes he ties up the lamb's legs and hangs the animal around his neck, then takes hold of the ram and heaves it up onto his shoulders. It's longer from nose to tail than he is tall, its body thick with muscle, but it's also old and skinnier than the dams. He takes a couple of steps to test his strength and decides he can manage it. 

He turns to look along the valley and figure out his best route home. Not low down in the trees, he'd get stuck in minutes. As he sweeps his gaze around, something catches his eye far below, further up the valley in the shadow of the taller peaks. Its shape is too regular to be natural. It's a tower, he realises finally. Built on an outcrop above the river, it is a round, tall construction of natural stones fitted seamlessly together. It has a flat roof with a thatched cover against the weather, and now he looks he can even see what might be a thin wooden bridge connecting the base to the slopes behind. From where it stands it must have a vista back along the valley almost to the plains. 

Kili can't see any movement, but he's sure Thorin or Dwalin would have mentioned if there was any other race living in these mountains. It must be dwarven. Kili eyes it for a while, then turns and heads on his way. 

It takes the rest of the day to traverse the way he'd come. He walks high up almost on the ridge and sings to himself as he goes, all of the songs he and Fili share that he's been too embarrassed to voice while other dwarves are around. The sun sinks down into the snowy peaks away over the ridge and turns the sky golden and then a slow-burning red. 

The first stars are glinting on the horizon when he smells the campfire. He staggers down the slope towards the warm glow. He can see Thorin’s hulking figure standing in front of the fire. His uncle turns and reaches for his sword as Kili stomps into the hollow.

“See!” Fili waves his hand, sitting on the edge of the fire’s glow. “I told you he’d come back in his own time.”

Thorin relaxes. With the light behind, his face is mostly shadowed. Dwalin stands up from the stone beside Fili. “Beat me bloody and throw me to the wargs,” he grunts, staring at Kili’s burden. “Where in the seven kingdoms did you find that?”

Kili huffs out a breath and mutters, “Huntin’.”

Dwalin slopes across the camp and grabs the ram’s body by the horns, helping Kili lower it to the ground. He swears – new curses of which Kili doesn’t recognise a single word – as he takes the weight of it. Thorin steps up, but not to help.

“Where have you been?” he snaps. “We’ve lost an entire days travelling because of your tantrum. What – what is this –” he looks between the ram and the lamb Kili is lifting from around his neck.

Kili shrugs, avoiding Thorin’s eye. Dwalin takes the lamb with a bray of laughter. “It’s an unexpected feast, that’s what it is. Fili, lad, get over here and help me.”

Kili drops down onto a smooth log. The day’s exertions hits him all at once, and he’s quite convinced he couldn’t stand up again even if a pack of orcs burst upon them right at that moment. He holds out Dwalin’s knife when the older dwarf starts complaining, patting himself down in search for it. Dwalin gives a cry and snatches it back. “I’ve been looking for this all day!”

Thorin stalks back and forth in front of the fire. “And now you’re thieving?”

Kili feels the flush rise in his cheeks once more. He narrows his eyes. “Nen. Was allhow gi’ it back.”

“If you take something without asking, that is stealing,” Thorin growls, throwing an arm out towards Dwalin, who has fallen silent, his eyes on Thorin and one hand wrapped around the lamb’s neck. Fili is crouched beside him, holding the animal’s legs out of the way.

“First your mothers’ beads, then running off, then Dwalin’s knife. This anti-social conduct endangers everyone around you. You must respect others’ belongings. You must think about your actions. Why, we could have been in the halls of Ered Luin tonight, if you had taken responsibility for your carelessness instead of going off in a sulk—”

Kili can only unravel about half of the words that are pouring from Thorin’s mouth. He sits staring at Thorin’s boots, his hunger vanishing under a swelling nausea. But Fili stands up. “What does it matter?”

Thorin stops pacing and jerks his head up. Fili throws his hand out towards Kili. “What does it matter, if we’re in the halls today or tomorrow? Why does everything have to be so – so set and planned? Why must there be rules for everything? Because it’s not for laziness or stupidity that we don’t know your rules! We got along fine without them for twelve years!”

For several long seconds, there is only the crackle of kindling collapsing in the fire. Dwalin clears his throat, raising his bushy eyebrows at Fili, and starts to skin the lamb. Fili sits back down to help him, shooting Thorin one last glare. Thorin folds his arms, and rakes his gaze over Kili again, then takes a couple of steps towards him.

He glances down at Kili’s bare feet. “What have you done?”

Kili hunches in and says nothing. He isn’t sure he could speak even if he knew how to talk like a proper dwarf. Thorin gets down on one knee, frowning up at him. “You were limping.”

“’s nothing,” Kili mutters. “I step’n a coney hole.”

Thorin shakes his head and takes hold of Kili’s foot, untying the binding quickly. Kili doesn’t dare protest as Thorin gently turns his ankle left and right. “Does that hurt?”

“Mmm. Nought,” Kili says, and then hisses and leans forward. “Nen! Nen!”

“You might have sprained it,” Thorin shakes his head as him.

“No. Dun even know wha’that means,” Kili replies surlily.

Thorin laughs, turning his face away as he does it as if it’s something impolite, like a sneeze. He shakes his head again. “You’ve been walking on this all day?”

“Dun even hurt. All the way from where I get the sheep. On a hill across from the stone tower,” Kili tosses his head.

Thorin’s eyebrows shoot up. He looks over at Dwalin, who has been listening in while showing Fili how best to cut up the lamb. Dwalin splutters. “Does he mean the Auga Watchtower?”

Thorin looks back at Kili. There’s a line between his brows. “You carried that thing all the way back? You might as well have gone on to the halls without us, you were more than halfway there!”

Kili shrugs. Thorin goes to his pack and comes back with bandages, which he wraps tight around Kili’s ankle. “You’re not walking on this tomorrow. You’re to ride one of the ponies. No arguments,” he raises his hand as Kili opens his mouth and ties off the bandage sharply. “And as soon as we’re at the halls, I’m finding you a pair of shoes. No, I said no arguments!” he repeats. “You can’t got round barefoot in there, there’s – construction sites, nails and rock shards, bees in the gardens – not to mention what you’ll do to the carpets, tredding mud in everywhere.”

His brother laughs and winks at Kili. “It’s not that bad, I promise.” He’s been wearing an old pair of boots from Balin since they left the dwarf town.

Thorin isn’t done. “And I have to do your hair again. It’s a mess. You can’t meet with the council at Ered Luin looking like you were dragged backwards through a bramble-bush. I’ll braid it once it’s combed, you’re old enough to start—” 

“Dun wan’ braids,” Kili says.

Thorin splutters at the interruption, one hand flying to his hip. “You can’t walk around with your hair hanging out like some lawless creature!”

This time Kili raises his head and holds Thorin’s gaze. “I don’t want braids,” he repeats, thinking about each word and shaping it slowly and clearly. Plaits are impossible to keep tidy, they bang against his head in the most annoying way, and anyway he just doesn’t like how they look. There’s silence for a long time until a few feet away, Dwalin clears his throat.

Thorin rumbles. “Very well. If that’s what you prefer. At least let me clip the worst of it back from your face.”

Kili nods frantically. He cannot believe it. He disagreed with Thorin and _Thorin changed his mind_. He feels rather like he’s falling very fast, though his uncle is still fussing like nothing remarkable has happened. He checks Kili’s ankle one last time, stands up and goes over to the ram. He nudges its horned head with his foot, shaking his head again and glancing at Kili. “We’ll wrap this up, it should keep until we get to the halls. A good welcoming present for the first night.”

“Aye, and a trophy for the great hall!” Dwalin grins, waving his bloodied knife at Kili. “Let no one say the blood has thinned in the descendents of Durin! Even their youngest can’t wander off in a huff without killing a few wild beasts!”

Thorin turns back towards the fire, but not before Kili sees the corners of his mouth twitch in a smile.

They feast late, the quarter-moon rising just as Kili can’t eat another bite. The fresh meat has brought some cheer into the camp, and Dwalin and Thorin have been trading stories from their youth. Kili’s eyelids are drooping shut right where he sits until Fili shuffles over and elbows him.

“Suppose you think you’re clever, don’t you?” Fili grins at him.

“Huh?”

Fili laughs. “He looked like he almost sicked up, he was so worried.”

“Who?” Kili hisses, brow creases.

“Thorin! He thought you’d fallen into a ravine somewhere, or got lost again. You proved him proper wrong.”

“Oh,” Kili leans over his knees. “I n’t try to prove nothing. ‘Lost again’?”

“Lost again,” Fili repeats, and looks over at Thorin, who is shaking his head over something Dwalin is guffawing about. “Only this time it didn’t take you twelve years to come home.”

Kili picks at his nails. The ram’s blood is still drying underneath. He says abruptly. “I’m sorry I shot your orc.”

His brother looks over at him sharply, his breathing suddenly shallow.

“Y’know,” Kili mumbles. “By th’ marsh. I knew he n’t gonna hurt you. I knew he were your friend. But I thinked – I thought – he’d take y’off and whittle you into an orc y’self. Thas why I shot him. To make him drop you, I n’t know Thorin’d kill him.”

He stares down at his hands, stretching and clenching his knuckles. Fili’s hand slips under his arm and squeezes his knee. “It happened. I’m not angry at you,” he said quietly. “I just want us to look forward. Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Kili agrees, leaning into him.

\---

And when they reach the dwarven halls, they are not met by a single door with a lock that takes eight hands to open, but dozens of doors. They pass through a narrow chasm barely wide enough for a pony and emerge in a wide, sheltered valley hemmed in by high cliffs. The doors are everywhere along the foothills and up long, winding stairs right at the top of the cliffsides. This part of the mountain was not built for defence or as the gateway to deep mines and kingdoms. The best of those mines are depleted now, the grand caverns take more fuel to heat than can be afforded, and many are dangerously in need of repair for which there is no time or spare hands. Instead the dwarves of Erebor live in what was once the poorest quarters of this kingdom, in shallow tunnels, the slum districts.

But that’s what makes them perfect, the places where there was never enough gold to go around and the dwarves who built them had to make do. Kili knows as soon as it all comes into view that it’s not a prison, not even a lavish prison of silver doors and tapestries a hundred feet in length. There's merely caves, but he’s used to caves, and the sunlight will be just beyond the threshold. These halls are not just holes, they even have windows, rough balconies, chimneys, and stepped plateaus full of gardens, irrigated by the clouds that pour off the Western sea and catch in the peaks to flood rain down the slopes and valleys. It is not traditional dwarf living, no, but it's something in between that and the wild life. A meeting in the middle. Kili stares with his mouth hanging open until he realises his brother is laughing at him.

News of their arrival has already passed from ear to ear, and the dwarves come down from the gardens and the cliffs and out of the caves to greet them. There are children running up with toy axes, yelling Thorin’s name, asking for news of their parents or their older brothers. Young children too; it is the first time in his entire life that Kili has met dwarves younger than him. They’re beardless and loud and they talk funny, like him. Mothers and grandfathers are close behind, and the labourers – women and men both, all in the same style of clothing, wiping the grease and ash from their hands – emerge from the doorways to wave at them.

He sticks close to his brother at first, crowded in by curious faces, which grow ever more numerous as word spreads of who they are. But soon they’re been hustled away for food and fresh clothes, and people talk at him, not realising he can't understand, but they listen too, and start to mime their words to help him catch up, smiling and clapping him on the back when he shakes his head helplessly. "Oh, you'll catch up soon enough," says one beaming dwarf with coal dust on his face, "My cousin can't speak a word you'd understand since he took an axe to the head, but that don't stop him bossing me about!"

Later, hours later, Kili is exhausted and wants nothing more than to find his brother and fall asleep in a quiet corner somewhere. He manages to slink away from the cluster of dwarves who've been herding him around and finds a columnated cloister thirty feet above the next terrace, overlooking the valley. He sits with his legs dangling over the edge and watches the last rays of the sun thin and vanish, and is almost falling asleep against the nearest column when a youngster with a thick mane of red hair bounds up to him and grabs his hand. 

"Come on, Mister Kili, they're waiting for you!" the boy insists. "Come along!"

He's pretty sure the ‘Mister’ is a serious exaggeration but the boy's grip is firm and he's too tired to protest. He's dragged back out into the golden dusk, the sun having just vanished behind the cliffs, and is led up and down paths and around gardens until they reach a set of steps where several paths converge. The double door at the top is of imported oak. The handles of wrought iron, clearly only a few years old, are delicate portrayals of headless dragons bent into circles. Inside is an antechamber lined with cloaks, walking sticks, leather aprons and gloves from work. The doors beyond are thrown open, and Kili can see a long hall newly carved from the mountain and filled with dwarves, many more than in the town outside of Bree, women and men and children, their voices filling the air and mingling together like many streams into a roaring river. Fili is standing on the threshold of the inner door. 

The boy bounds ahead, "I found him!"

"Thank you, Gimli," Fili says. "Go on in and find your Nana."

The boy vanishes up the aisle. At the very front stands Thorin, in fresh clothes, with Dwalin and a number of new faces by his side. Above his head are mounted decorated shields and axes of past eras, some with paint so faded and peeling that their crests cannot be distinguished, some chipped and cracked from battle. Right on the end of the line, freshly set into a plate of polished wood, are a pair of clean ram's horns. Kili feels a hot rush of embarrassment, because surely his small trophy has no place here, among the emblems and spoils of great battles and mighty ancestors. Thorin is indulging him, like a child allowed to sit at the adult's table for a feast and coddled until bedtime. Surely he'll take the horns down tomorrow and put them away in some distant corridor. 

Fili follows his eyeline and then looks back at his blushing face. He gives a lop-sided grin, "He's not teasing you."

"n't no warrior," Kili mutters.

"No, that's not what it means. I heard them making the frame earlier. Dwarves don't hunt big game, they farm their meat, or buy it. Yours are the only horns up there, see? You're not like the warriors. You just brought something new. They think it's terribly clever."

He holds his hand out towards Kili. "We'll sit at the back for now," he says. "We'll just listen. But we should still go inside."

Kili nods, grips his brother's hand, and follows him in. 

\---[ ]---

**_Epilogue_ **

Bilbo had never turned down food in his life. Maybe he’d thrown out a burnt scone on occasion, or refused a second helping of Aunt Mirabella’s black pudding stew, which had been a notorious horror to all her nieces and nephews as long as he could remember. But to turn down perfectly good food, or at least passable travelling supplies – unthinkable!

“Are you sure you won’t try a couple of mouthfuls?” Bofur asked, with an almost painful earnestness. He crouched to hold the bowl in front of Bilbo’s nose, where he lay slumped against a pile of packs. The smell of soaked sausage and radishes sent Bilbo’s chest heaving. He clapped his hand to his mouth and shook his head. A few feet away, Nori elbowed Gloin and they both laughed. Bilbo wondered how much they’d be laughing if he evacuated whatever bile was left in his stomach all over their blankets. 

Bofur drew the food away, his mouth drawn into a pitying frown. He patted Bilbo’s shoulder. “Give it until tomorrow. It’ll pass.”

“That’s if I live until tomorrow,” Bilbo croaked. “By tomorrow I think I shall have sent most of my bones the way of my breakfast—oh—”

He heaved himself to his feet, gripping Bofur’s arm for support, and staggered away from the camp into the sparse woods.

“Stay west, Bilbo!” Bofur called after him. “Downstream of the camp!”

Oh dear, oh blast, oh bother it. He’d give his whole fourteenth share of the gold – he’d steal half of the remainder and give that too – if it meant he could know which stream he’d drunk from, what he could possibly have eaten, that had brought this misery on. None of the dwarves were afflicted, damn them! Balin said dwarves had iron stomachs, but Bofur had cheerily reminded them of several occasions he could remember when he or a cousin had spent a few days lying on a bed with a bucket – and a chamberpot – close at hand. This might have raised Bilbo’s spirits if Bofur’s lurid descriptions hadn’t also brought up the few pieces of bread he’d just forced down his throat.

It had been a long day. A long day on a bumpy road on a pony that smelled. He felt like a sponge that had been washed and wrung out so many times it was falling apart.

He clung to a branch with one shaking hand and wiped his mouth with the other. Insects buzzed around his ears and began to settle in the mess he’d made on the forest floor. He took a few breaths until he was sure his legs weren’t going to give out and then began to pick his way back to the others. As soon as he stepped into the circle of firelight, a dark, wild-haired figure loomed up beside him.

“Still crook?” Kili said brightly. “I’ve got something to help.”

His vision swimming, Bilbo turned his head towards the young dwarf's amicable grin. He had thrust out his hands, in which were cupped what looked like several handfuls of foliage.

Bilbo sighed heavily. “I really,” he took a breath, “can’t manage another dwarvish joke right now, Kili.”

“It’s not a trick!” Kili looked shocked that Bilbo would accuse him of such a thing. “Honestly, it’s not this time,” he pinched something out of the greenery and held it out. “I’ve been picking them for you since we stopped to camp. The new shoots, look, you chew them – maybe eight or ten – and you’ll feel better. Another three each time you throw up.”

Bilbo raised his eyebrows, but Kili hadn’t broken into sniggers yet, and it seemed like an elaborately prepared and ill-timed joke if that was the case. He shrugged and allowed Kili to break the shoots off and drop them into his hand one by one. They tasted like nothing more than bitter grass or dandelion juice, but the fibrous leaves were easier to swallow than the oily soup that Bofur had been offering. Bilbo thanked Kili wearily and went to lie down against the packs again, drinking as much of his water-skin as he could, to wash down the taste.

He dozed over the next couple of hours, surfacing to the murmur of the dwarves trading stories and then sinking back into dreams filled with their songs. When he awoke, it was to Dori and Ori trying to ease their packs out from under his head.

“Ah, my apologies, Mister Hobbit,” Dori winced. “We’re all turning in for the evening, but I’m afraid you’ll have to relinquish your hold on our blankets.”

“S’alright, s’fine,” Bilbo sat up and rubbed his eyes.

His mouth still tasted of bile, and he fumbled for the water-skin and took a few more sips. To his surprise, his guts didn’t didn’t rumble and send another wave of nausea through his nerves. He got up and stretched, rubbing the heel of his hand against his chest. His stomach still felt tender and unwelcoming towards the idea of food, but the overwhelming urge to bolt for the trees was gone.

He found Fili and Kili lying on their bedrolls on the other side of the fire, arguing about the names of stars. Twinned as always, they both had their legs crossed at the ankles and one arm tucked behind their heads, though Fili was tending his pipe to break the symmetry.

“Hallo!” Kili propped himself up onto his elbows as he noticed Bilbo. “How’s the delicate hobbit constitution?”

“Rather improved, uh, thank you,” Bilbo sat himself cross-legged on the grass beside the brothers. “I think you were right.”

“Don’t tell him that,” Fili snorted, resting his pipe on his chest. “We thought we’d beaten that foolish notion out of him.”

“I have a thicker skull than you think,” Kili thumped his brother with the back of his hand.

“I should say you do.”

“Oi!”

Bilbo raised his hand to get their attention. “Yes, well, I was wondering if you couldn’t point me towards the plant with your magic leaves. In the morning, if you like.”

“Of course!” Kili jammed his hand into his pocket and held out a few wilted shoots. “And here’s a few more if you wake up in the night.”

Bilbo shook his head as he took the squashed handful from Kili’s grubby fingers. “What’s it called, anyway? I wonder if we have it in the Shire.”

“I call it the powder-tail flower,” Kili said, and then grimaced up at the sky. “Don’t know if dwarves have a name for it, though.”

Bilbo gulped. “Who told you it was medicine, then?” he had sudden visions of backwater farmers handing out homemade cattle remedies with nightshade and monkshood.

“He figured these things out himself, when we were living wild,” Fili said dryly. “I should have warned you.”

“They’re all thoroughly tested on yours truly,” Kili protested, slapping his stomach. “If it didn’t kill me as a wee lad, I’m sure it won’t do a hobbit any harm.”

“I see,” Bilbo narrowed his eyes. “Not an attentive brother back then, were you, Fili?”

“I figured, better him than me,” Fili winked.

Bilbo wrinkled his nose and popped another furled leaf into his mouth. He saw the brothers share some look he couldn’t decipher, a muttered word, and Kili threw back his head gave a bark of laughter.

Bilbo swallowed the pulped leaf down his raw, stinging throat. He frowned. “What do you mean, living wild?”

Kili’s lips peeled away from his teeth in an exaggerated face of embarrassment, but Fili sucked at his pipe and then pointed it at Bilbo. He looked at his brother. “You reckon he’d believe us?”

“No!” Kili laughed. “He barely believes me when I tell him it’s raining.”

“It’s still a good story, though.”

“It’s a _dull_ story,” Kili mumbled, now with a clear note of reluctance. The smile had slipped from his face.

“Believe what?” Bilbo pressed, rolling another shoot between his thumb and forefinger. He thought he could almost feel the first twinge of a healthy hunger. “Go on. I’m sure Balin can tell me if you’re pulling my leg. I mean, unless it’s not something I should be passing on—”

“It’s not that,” Kili shook his head. “It’s just. You see. It was a long time ago.”

Bilbo looked between him and Fili, quite lost as to how this all summed up to medicinal herbs without dwarven names. Fili was looking at his brother, but after some time he turned his gaze on Bilbo once again.

“It doesn’t start nicely,” he said. In his hand, the glow of his pipe smoked as it burned itself out. “In fact, it starts with the last night we ever saw our mother…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boring details: The common names of the plants in order of mention are sundew, vegetable sheep, snowberries, black beeches, lacebar, kanuka and manuka. I couldn’t actually find the name of the shrub Kili uses to bind his ankle, though I did have one in mind. The plant he gives Bilbo is koromiko, certain parts of which contain phenolic glycocide, which is supposed to be great for dysentery. There are, however, no wild sheep in NZ.


End file.
